Brief treatise on legal reason

Abstract

Review of Breve Tratado da Razão Jurídica, by António Braz Teixeira, published in 2012 by Zéfiro. The text opens with biographical data and with the academic and institutional career of the Portuguese author, and then covers the four chapters of the book: Law, Language and Reason; Legal Logic; Legal Hermeneutics; and Legal Rhetoric. It records the distinction between normative or deontic logic and apophantic logic, the analysis of the logical structure of the legal norm as a relational proposition, the nature of legal-normative judgements as hypothetical conditional judgements and the characteristics of the legal concept. In the chapter on hermeneutics, it follows the exposition of hermeneutic theory, hermeneutic philosophy and critical hermeneutics, with reference to Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Betti, Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Apel and Habermas, and to the schools of legal hermeneutics, from the School of Exegesis to Alf Ross, Reale, Dworkin and Aarnio. As to legal rhetoric, it reports the treatment of dialectical reasoning, of the five stages of the rhetorical process and of the twentieth-century revival of rhetoric in Viehweg, Perelman, Toulmin, MacCormick and Alexy. It closes by recording the position of the reviewed author, who places legal argumentation midway between demonstrative and problematic reasoning.