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The Potential of Abductive Legal Reasoning
Author(s) -
Askeland Bjarte
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/raju.12268
Subject(s) - abductive reasoning , inference , epistemology , field (mathematics) , deductive reasoning , frame (networking) , non monotonic logic , computer science , artificial intelligence , cognitive science , psychology , philosophy , mathematics , telecommunications , pure mathematics
The article describes the potential of abductive legal reasoning as a means of systematically exploring the role of inferences within legal reasoning. Starting out from the structures of abduction as originally presented by Peirce in his four‐horsemen example, the author points to the fact that Peirce actually employed a hypothesis that targeted an institutional fact. Hence the abductive inference has a great potential for categorising new phenomena under norms, yet it is undertheorised within the field of law as compared to other fields of science. The article presents the idea of comparison in the frame of “double abduction” as an important feature of legal reasoning.