No Reasons
NUS Law Working Paper No. 2018/017
in McBride & Penner (eds) New Essays on the Nature of Legal Reasoning (2021) (Hart)
Posted: 18 Jul 2018 Last revised: 17 Apr 2020
Date Written: July 18, 2018
Abstract
Identifying the role of precedent in law, and the conditions under which a judge may permissibly distinguish precedent, is a central task for any account, or theory, of legal reasoning. Unsurprisingly, different accounts, or theories, of precedent abound. My focus in this paper is on an intriguing, and prima facie appealing, relatively recent effort to identify the role of precedent in law, offered by Grant Lamond (2005). My modest aim is threefold: (1) To point out that Lamond’s account of Joseph Raz’s (1979) seminal so-called rules account of precedent is inaccurate in important ways. (2) To claim that Lamond fails to see that the core of his so-called reasons account of precedent is extensionally equivalent to Raz’s account. Moreover Lamond reaches extensional equivalence with Raz by means of several contestable assumptions not needed by Raz. And (3) To argue that the (only) portion of Lamond’s account which genuinely goes beyond Raz – viz. Lamond’s extension of his core to account for the development of legal doctrine – is, whilst fascinating, mistaken.
Keywords: Precedent, Distinguishing, Rules Account, Reasons Account, Legal Theory
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation