Logic for Lawyers
![handle is hein.journals/mcglr13 and id is 97 raw text is: Logic for Lawyers*
JACK L. LANDAU**
Thispart of humanphilosophy which regards logic is disagreeable to the
taste of many, as appearing to them no more than a net and a snare of
thorny subtlety .... But if we would rate things according to their real
worth, the rational sciences are the keys to all the rest.
-Francis Bacon
Contrariwise, continued Tweedledee, f it was so, it might be, and if
it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.
-Lewis Carroll
It is nearly an article of faith of contemporary legal thinking that the
law is not logical. The law involves complex considerations of justice,
history, equity, facts, social customs, and economics. It cannot, as the
saying goes, be reduced to a syllogism. Greater minds than ours have
echoed the famous dicta a page of history is worth a volume of
logic,' and the life of the law is not logic but experience.2 As a
* Copyright 1981 by Jack L. Landau
** Instructor of Law, Northwestern School of Law of Lewis and Clark College; J.D. North-
western School of Law of Lewis and Clark College (1980); B.A. Lewis and Clark College (1975).
This paper is an expanded version of an address given to the Legal Writing, Reasoning, and
Research Section meeting at the January 5, 1981 American Association of Law Schools conven-
tion.
1. The actual quote is: Upon this point a page of history is worth a volume of logic. New
York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U.S. 345, 349 (1921).
2. 0. HOLMES, THE COMMON LAw 1 (1938) [hereinafter cited as HOLMES]. But see E.
COKE, 1 INSTITUTEs 138: Reason is the Life of the Law. Holmes' famous quote is quite similar
to Rudolf von Jhering's comments on the civil law:
This desire for logic that turns jurisprudence into legal mathematics is an error and
arises from misunderstanding law. Life does not exist for the sake of concepts but con-
cepts for the sake of life. It is not logic that is entitled to exist but what is claimed by life,
by social relations, by the sense ofjustice-and logical necessity, or logical impossibility,
is immaterial.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/mcglr13&div=15&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Logic for Lawyers
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