Basic principles of legal reasoning

Legal reasoning is a logical thinking activity that starts from a certain premise, based on the principles or reasons in law and jurisprudence, and provides legitimate reasons for the application of law according to certain reasoning rules or laws. Characteristics of legal reasoning 1. Legal reasoning is based on principles or reasons in law and jurisprudence. For example, if you see the sunset glow at night, some people say that tomorrow will be fine. This reasoning is based on the theory of meteorology. Similarly, when solving legal problems, the legal person needs to interpret according to the legal interpretation method recognized by the legal subject.

2. Legal reasoning is bound by existing laws. In China, the Constitution, laws, administrative regulations and local regulations are the preconditions and conditions of legal reasoning.

3. Legal reasoning is a kind of reasoning that seeks legitimacy. Because law is a kind of social norm, its content is the requirement, prohibition and permission of human behavior, so the core of legal reasoning is mainly to provide legitimate reasons for whether the behavior norm or human behavior is correct or appropriate.

Types of legal reasoning

Frequently applicable legal reasoning is as follows:

deductive inference

Deductive reasoning is reasoning that draws conclusions from major premises and minor premises. The above major premise represents the whole, and the minor premise represents the people or things in the whole. The classical method of deductive reasoning is syllogism. For example, "everyone will die" is the major premise, "Socrates is a man" is the minor premise, and "Socrates will die" is the conclusion. Therefore, deductive reasoning is from general to individual reasoning. There are just three words in deductive reasoning, which refer to the big word "dying", the Chinese word "man" and the small word "Socrates" in logic. Each word happens to appear in two propositions. There will be no item in the conclusion.

In deductive reasoning, we follow the following reasoning rules:

(1) In an effective syllogism, there are three words, each of which has a meaning when used in reasoning;

(2) In an effective syllogism, at least one item of the premise belongs to GAI；; (In the above example, the "owner" in the major premise belongs to GAI, and the "person" in the minor premise is not GAI. )

(3) In an effective syllogism, words that are not GAI on the premise will not be Gai in the conclusion; (For example, "Socrates" in Minor Premises and Conclusions is not GAI)

(4) The syllogism without negative premise is effective;

(5) In an effective syllogism, there is a premise negation, and the conclusion must be negation;

(6) syllogism reasoning with special conclusions cannot have two full names.

(B) inductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning is the reasoning from individual to general. Deductive reasoning holds that the premise is true and the conclusion is true. The proposition of inductive reasoning is that the premise is true and the conclusion may or may not be true. The reason is that in deductive reasoning, there is an inevitable connection between one existing information and another inferred information. However, in inductive reasoning, the relationship between one existing information and another inferred information is not inevitable. The conclusion of inductive reasoning is probable, and its reliability depends on the number and distribution range of cases cited by the reasoner.

In order to ensure the credibility and certainty of inductive reasoning conclusions, we abide by the following reasoning rules:

(1) as many subjects as possible;

(2) The scope of the survey object is as wide as possible;

(3) The differences between the respondents should be as large as possible:

(3) Analogical reasoning

Analogical reasoning is the reasoning from individual to individual. Analogical reasoning is based on the similarity of two or two things in some attributes, thus inferring that they are similar in another attribute or other attributes. Its general form is:

A has the attributes of a, b, c and d.

B has a, b and c attributes?

Therefore, b has the d attribute.

Compared with inductive reasoning, the conclusion of analogical reasoning is probabilistic, that is, it may be true or false.

The conclusion of analogical reasoning is based on important cases. In analogical reasoning, the acceptability of reasoning conclusions depends on the judgment of importance or relevance. But this judgment is uncertain. For example, there are two children, one is 10 and the other is 6 years old. One night, you allowed the 10-year-old child to go to bed at 9: 00 p.m. because he had no class tomorrow. You ask the 6-year-old to go to bed at 8 pm, because younger children need more sleep. The 6-year-old child thinks that he has been treated unfairly on the grounds that he and the 10-year-old child are children, and they have no class the next day and should go to bed at 9 o'clock. But you think their age difference is more important than other similarities, because this difference is directly related to the problem to be solved-sleep time.

It can be seen that the importance problem is situational and depends on the problem to be solved. The uncertainty of importance judgment is also the reason why people question analogical reasoning. In legal reasoning, analogical reasoning also depends on the following two criteria:

(1) The acceptability of analogical reasoning is directly proportional to the number of analyzed situations;

(2) Acceptability depends on the number of positive similarity and negative similarity.

Hypothetical reasoning

Hypothetical reasoning is the reasoning that first chooses a hypothesis from all the hypotheses that can explain the facts. For example, early in the morning, we found that the lawn in front of our house was wet, so we assumed that if it rained last night, the lawn would be wet. Therefore, we can draw the following conclusion: it rained last night. The general form of this inference is:

C. Observed or unexplained phenomena

If h is true, then c is the natural result.

So, H.

Hypothetical reasoning first requires the reasoner to form some hypothetical backgrounds and related perceptual facts, that is, to understand the field to which the phenomenon to be explained belongs. Proving inference begins with juxtaposing unfamiliar facts (novel facts) with familiar facts (background facts). Novel facts need to be understood with reference to background facts.

Proving reasoning is a kind of weak reasoning, but it cannot be abandoned in the process of legal application. After hearing the facts of a case, a legal person usually assumes a case result based on his "pre-understanding of the law", then looks for the law according to this result, and finally determines a reasonable and effective legal judgment.

The inference conclusion of proof argument is uncertain, because the legal person's pre-understanding plays a role in making assumptions, which can be right or wrong. This means that when using evidence to establish a hypothesis, legal persons should try to find all possible solutions in law and jurisprudence, and then determine the best one among them.