Table of Contents

1: Prologue: Institutional Theory and the Lawmaker's Perspective
2: The Rule of Law and the Arguable Character of Law
3: On the Legal Syllogism
4: Defending Deductivism
5: Universals and Particulars
6: Judging by Consequences
7: Arguing about Interpretation
8: Using Precedents
9: Being Reasonable
10: Coherence, Principles, and Analogies
11: Legal Narratives
12: Arguing Defeasibly
13: Judging Mistakenly?

About the Author

Neil MacCormick was formerly the Regius Professor of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations (1972-2008) at the University of Edinburgh. he was appointed Queen's Counsel (QC) honoris causa, England and Wales in 1999 and was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2001 in recognition of services to scholarship in Law. He is the holder of the Royal Medal for Humanities and Social Sciences, Royal Society of Edinburgh 2004. From 1999-2004 he served as Member
of the European Parliament.

Reviews

Rhetoric and the Rule of Law is a fine work. It is stimulating: it makes the reader want to argue and test its tenets. It is too good to be read only by legal theorists.
*Joe Thomson, Edinburgh Law Review, Vol 13,*

Its erudite elegance means that it will serve as an excellent introduction to jurisprudence for undergraduates, as well as providing a major contribution to legal philosophy. MacCormick reaffirms the dialectic between the universal and the particular.
*James Lee, University of Birmingham, Jurisprudence*