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The issue of legal reasoning has been addressed widely in legal academia and practice, but rarely considered by linguists. This paper, employing the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) genre perspective and the discourse semantics system as its conceptual framework, attempts to reveal the different ways of legal reasoning of common law judicial opinions and Chinese judgments from a textual perspective. One judicial opinion of a British case and one judgment of a Chinese case are explored for comparison. The findings suggest that Chinese judgments as a legal genre, compared with its counterpart of common law judicial opinions, unfold not in waves construed by multilayered Theme-and-New structure, but in chunks establishing no prediction or consolidation. We argue that this mode of text unfolding in waves is vitally important for readers to follow the judge’s reasoning and construct a sense of fairness and justice. We suggest that the periodicity and the generic structure of common law judicial opinions would be a valuable frame of reference for the Chinese judicial reform on judgments in improving its legal reasoning.

Legal reasoning: a textual perspective on common law judicial opinions and Chinese judgments