Logic in legal application

Author: Yong Qi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-12-01
Features: In the process of adjudicating cases, judicial personnel apply general legal provisions to specific cases to arrive at conclusions of judgments or rulings, which is the process of legal application. This is also a process of legal reasoning, primarily manifested in the interpretation and argumentation of the conclusions of judgments or rulings. The application of legal reasoning is not only a creative legal practice but also an intellectual activity that reflects the art or skill of thinking. Therefore, whether judicial personnel are skilled in applying legal reasoning and the level of their application are important aspects of measuring their professional competence. In recent years, with the increasing perfection of China's socialist legal system and the continuous deepening of judicial reforms, higher requirements have been placed on the professional competence of judicial personnel, leading to growing attention being paid to the study of legal reasoning. Monographs on specialized topics related to legal reasoning have been frequently published. However, as many scholars have pointed out, legal reasoning permeates legal practice and cognitive activities such as legislation, law enforcement, adjudication, and even citizens' compliance with the law. Moreover, the study of legal reasoning can be approached from different perspectives and levels: philosophical, litigation law, and of course, logical. This book explores the construction and related issues of legal reasoning during the stage of legal application (i.e., judicial reasoning) from a logical (but not purely formal logic) perspective. It focuses on the technical aspects of logic rather than the theoretical level. Of course, this is merely an exploratory attempt. The research on this book's topic was fortunate enough to be included in the "Chongqing 'Ninety-Five' Social Science Planning Project" and was funded. However, the research work did not begin in 1998 when it was approved for implementation but rather was an extension and deepening of previous achievements. It originated from A Brief Discussion on Adjudicative Logic (authored by Yong Qi, published by Sichuan People's Publishing House in 1990) and was revised based on An Introduction to Adjudicative Logic (edited by Yong Qi, published by Chengdu University of Science and Technology Press in 1998). Without the foundation of these earlier achievements, this project could not have been completed in such a short time. During the writing of this book, Associate Professors Jin Chengguang and Yao Rongmao, in addition to undertaking the main writing tasks, also took on nearly all the administrative work related to completing this project. Apart from their hard work, this book also benefited from the efforts of our university's graduate students in litigation logic from 1987 onwards. During their time at school, they read numerous domestic and international relevant works, providing valuable materials and information for this research. Their reflections and findings on related issues are also integrated into this book. Although this book, if calculated from the research of its earlier achievements, has now been over a decade, the question of how to study and structurally build legal reasoning from a logical perspective, particularly in terms of its methodological significance, remains a new topic worthy of research. Due to the difficulty in finding existing reference materials and the author's lack of practical experience, this book inevitably has many shortcomings. What gives us some comfort is that compared to previous achievements, it has taken a step forward on the original foundation. We sincerely hope to receive criticism and corrections from more scholars in the fields of law and logic, as well as from the broader judicial workforce. The publication of this book was greatly supported and assisted by Mr. Shen Zhongjun, the former chief editor of the Legal Textbook Editorial Department of the Ministry of Justice. We express our sincere gratitude for his support. Yong Qi November 2002 at Southwest University of Political Science and Law