Legal Reasoning

Legal reasoning is the way lawyers and judges talk publicly about the law. This legal language gives us the tools to tell the difference between impartial and partisan legal decisions. Legal reasoning also provides a language tool, which enables people of different beliefs and worldviews to arbitrate their differences in a way that is acceptable to all, resulting in decisions that are seen as legitimate in a pluralistic society.

Legal reasoning matters, because it is the means by which judges can convince us of their integrity. Even though we disagree with the decision we may not disagree with the way the decision was made.

Deductive and Inductive Reasoning:

Deductive reasoning
Deductive reasoning is a basic form of valid reasoning. Deductive reasoning, or deduction, starts out with a general statement, or hypothesis, and examines the possibilities to reach a specific, logical conclusion. The scientific method uses deduction to test hypotheses and theories.
In deductive reasoning, if something is true of a class of things in general, it is also true for all members of that class. For example, "All men are mortal. Harold is a man. Therefore, Harold is mortal." For deductive reasoning to be sound, the hypothesis must be correct. It is assumed that the premises, "All men are mortal" and "Harold is a man" are true. Therefore, the conclusion is logical and true.
It's possible to come to a logical conclusion even if the generalization is not true. If the generalization is wrong, the conclusion may be logical, but it may also be untrue. For example, the argument, "All bald men are grandfathers. Harold is bald. Therefore, Harold is a grandfather," is valid logically but it is untrue because the original statement is false.

Inductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning is the opposite of deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning makes broad generalizations from specific observations. Even if all of the premises are true in a statement, inductive reasoning allows for the conclusion to be false. Here’s an example: "Harold is a grandfather. Harold is bald. Therefore, all grandfathers are bald." The conclusion does not follow logically from the statements.
Inductive reasoning has its place in the scientific method. Scientists use it to form hypotheses and theories. Deductive reasoning allows them to apply the theories to specific situations.   

Elements:

Elements	Definition	Issue	Decision
1. Case Facts	Testimony as to what happened that is preserved as evidence in a trial.	Did the Judge follow the facts as established in the trial, or did he ignore them?	Yes Good Reasoning	No Poor Reasoning. Judge is not persuasive that he arrived at his decision fairly.
2. Social Background Facts	How we believe the world works. The facts, conditions, events that we observe as to how the world works.	Did the Judge give due recognition to facts that we observe on how the world works.	Yes Good Reasoning. Reflects reality.	No. Judge lives on another planet and only commutes to Earth.
3. Rules of Law	Uses the official legal texts in their hierarchy of value that are intended for cases like this	Did the Judge read the texts correctly and use them in their proper hierarchy.	Yes. Good authority for the decision	No. Authority for the decision is not creditable.
4.Widely Share Moral Values and Social Principles	A due recognition that some things are right and some things are wrong as acceptable social behavior	Did the Judge follow the community's consensus about moral values and social principles	Yes. Decision fits moral code of community	No. Decision is contrary to the accepted moral code of the community. Therefore it is not what the law ought to be.

Approaches to counselling

Counselling Method	Causes for Problems	Treatment Method	Counsellor’s Approach
Psychoanalysis (Psychological)	Regression of natural desires with sexual and social maladjustments	Psychotherapy with emphasis on childhood experiences	Expert Knowledge
Non-Directive Counselling (self-discovery)	Lack of self-understanding	Affirmation of self and self-directed growth	Common Knowledge
Existential Counselling (meaning)	Unfulfilled needs and potential	Redirecting of priorities to fulfil personal needs with self-fulfilment	Humanistic Knowledge
Transactional Analysis (cognitive)	Playing out of inappropriate roles from learned past experiences	Re-education of mechanics of roles (parent, adult, child)	Educative Knowledge
Behavioural Counselling (behaviour)	Wrong learned behaviour	Relearning based primarily upon a reward system omitting punishment	Experimental Knowledge
Reality Therapy (facing issues)	Refusal to accept current reality resulting in blame and escapism	Confrontation with facts	Authoritative Knowledge
Biblical Counselling (obeying God)	Sin and a lack of understanding spiritual knowledge, wisdom and truth	Application of the word of God by hearing and obeying God	Revelational Knowledge

Basic Approaches to Counselling

significance of mooting to law students

What is mooting?

Mooting is the oral presentation of a legal issue or problem against an opposing counsel and before a judge. It is perhaps the closest experience that a student can have whilst at university to appearing in court.

Why should I get involved in mooting?

Mooting now forms a compulsory part of certain law courses, but is still a totally voluntary student-organised activity in other law schools. Whether or not mooting is compulsory at your law school, gaining mooting experience can have a positive impact on your future career.

As many students will be aware, the legal profession is an increasingly difficult one to enter. Application forms for legal professional courses, solicitors’ firms and barristers’ chambers often demand that a candidate can provide evidence of their advocacy or mooting experience whilst at university (over and above any of the more traditional areas of advocacy such as debating).

Mooting may also help you to build confidence in public speaking, general research, and presentation skills. In other words mooting experience can benefit every student whether or not they plan to follow a traditional legal career path upon graduation.

syllogism

A syllogism  is a kind of logical argument in which one proposition (the conclusion) is inferred from two or more others (the premises) of a specific form. In antiquity, two rival theories of the syllogism existed: Aristotelian syllogistic and Stoic syllogistic.

Aristotle defines the syllogism as "a discourse in which certain (specific) things having been supposed, something different from the things supposed results of necessity because these things are so." Despite this very general definition, Aristotle limits himself to categorical syllogisms which consist of three categorical propositions in his work Prior Analytic. These included categorical modal syllogisms.

From the Middle Ages onward, "categorical syllogism" and "syllogism" were mostly used interchangeably, and the present article is concerned with this traditional use of "syllogism" only. The syllogism was at the core of traditional deductive reasoning, where facts are determined by combining existing statements, in contrast to inductive reasoning where facts are determined by repeated observations.

the logic and law

Law is of vital importance, touching the lives of all people. The effect of law also matters a great deal, and the costs of mistakes can be serious. In order to comply with the law it must be understood by those it affects, and to be accepted it must be explained in terms that are comprehensible by those to whom they are
addressed. Moreover, the law must be applied in a way which is transparent and accountable.

The original use of logic in law was for representation of law in a clear and unambiguous manner. In these approaches, reasoning was seen as simply deduction from the resulting formal representation. This conception, adopting a narrow view of logic, sees reasoning as following from representation: once the meaning of the concepts has been formalized, the notion of valid inference follows automatically, so that the main task is to develop sound and complete proof procedures. In other words: representing the law comes first; the reasoning follows from it and can be done within a traditional conception of logic. This approach was popularized, which showed the strengths of the approach by applying it to a piece of new legislation in
which issues of interpretation were minimized, but the success here was not readily transferable to other areas.

Attempts to build on this work led to the realization that many aspects of legal reasoning go beyond the semantics of traditional logical approaches. When a law is framed, the legislators are well aware that they cannot envisage all the circumstances in which it will be applied. Typically they will enunciate a general norm, capturing the essence of the proposed measure, and then qualify this with a series of exceptions. Furthermore they use abstract concepts, intended to be interpreted in the light of the concrete facts of the cases that are brought before the court. This leads to uncertainty and disagreement, in situations moreover, where there are inevitably conflicts of interest. Therefore, to apply to law, the logic must be robust in the face of exceptions,
conflicting rules, vagueness, and open texture and recognize the possibility of rational disagreement.

Some of these features primarily led to innovations in approaches to reasoning, others made it necessary to consider context, procedure, interaction and other dynamic aspects. The need to handle these features has also led to a broader conception of logic. This is essentially a special case of a general development in logic. For instance, speaks (in addition to a computational turn) of first a cognitive turn in logic, in which greater interest is paid how reasoning is actually practiced and then an interactive turn, in which the reasoning is considered in the context of the behavior of intelligent agents engaged in social interaction, with meaning emerging from these communicative exchanges.

legal V/s general counselling

Legal counseling and General counseling are two separate terms that should be used with difference. They are certainly not the words that have the same meanings. Legal counseling is the advice given on legal matters or matters related to law and its proceedings. It is important to know that legal counseling is given by lawyers or advocates who are in need of help regarding matters of dispute, controversy and the like.

Legal counseling is given as part of law suits or cases pending on the defendant. Plaintiffs also get legal counseling from their lawyers in matters relating to the case. They are advised as to how to proceed with the case. Legal counseling is given in the professional mode. In other words it can be said that legal counseling is looked upon as a part of the profession of a lawyer. It is quite natural that a lawyer is paid fees for imparting legal counseling to his client.

General counseling on the other hand is counsel or advice given on matters related to general interest such as education, job placement, career building and the like. It is of two types, namely, the professional and the service-oriented. In the professional type of general counseling the practitioner collects fees for guiding a student or a person as to how to build a career, secure a job overseas or plan for higher studies. General counseling also aims at solving problems of the people related to psychology such as anxiety, depression, anger, stress, lack of self confidence, conflict between couples and the like.

In the service-oriented type of general counseling the cell forms a part of an educational institution like a college or a university and it collects no fees since it becomes a part of the institution. This is the difference between legal and general counseling.

what is Legal Counselling

Counselling meas different things to different people. To some it's about advice, and to others it's tea and sympathy. For others, counselling is a long term process.

My interpretation of the meaning of counselling is about helping people who want to change some aspects of their thoughts, feelings or behavior to enhance their life, or simply to explore and/or clarify their thoughts or feelings.By counselling I mean talking to a counselor, i.e., someone who is properly trained and has regular professional supervision.

Counselling is not about giving advice in the sense of ready-made solutions to your problem. No one can be 'sent' for counselling and counselling can't be 'done to you'. A person makes a positive choice to see a counselor and the process demands commitment in terms of time, hard work and finance.