This primer on legal reasoning is aimed at law students and upper-level undergraduates. But it is also an original exposition of basic legal concepts that scholars and lawyers will find stimulating. It covers such topics as rules, precedent, authority, analogical reasoning, the common law, statutory interpretation, legal realism, judicial opinions, legal facts, and burden of proof.

In addressing the question whether legal reasoning is distinctive, Frederick Schauer emphasizes the formality an...

“A vast cabinet of curiosities.”—Stephen Greenblatt“Eclectic rather than exhaustive, less an encyclopedia than a buffet.”—Frederic Raphael, Literary ReviewHow do we get from the polis to the police? Or from Odysseus’s sirens to those of an ambulance? The legacy of ancient Greece and Rome is all around us, imitated, resisted, reworked, and misunderstood. In this beautifully illustrated and encyclopedic compendium, a team of leading scholars investigates the afterlife of this rich...