Law is a social practice and the contributions of its participants are complementary. Under these
conditions, legal reasoning is first and foremost an interpretation of these practices and
presupposes an internal point of view on the part of the person who wishes to give an account of
them. Legal reasoning is thus conceived as practical argumentation, subordinated to the
demands of rationality, because those who participate in legal practice are obliged to give
reasons for their actions, and these reasons weave a web of constraints. In legal theory, legal
reasoning is implicitly presented as a universal activity. Of course, the data used in this reasoning
may differ, and even considerably, but the considerably, but, according to the prevailing view, a
rational person should, in principle reason in the same way in all countries and cultures. Even if
the field and subject matter of the jurist do not conform to the criteria of classical science, his
method of work conforms one hundred per cent to the criteria of scientificity. The jurist performs
purely scientific work with his scientific research method, analytical, synthetic, systematic and
dialectical reasoning, and logical techniques of analogy, abstraction, generalisation, parsing,
deduction and induction. Indeed, to the extent that the jurist interprets and applies the rules of
law in a rational manner in accordance with the logical rules of methodology, he/she engages in a
purely scientific activity. The jurist works with logical concepts and propositions; by reasoning
analytically, synthetically, systematically and dialectically, and by employing the logic of
abstraction and comparison, he makes consistent inferences; he produces reasoned judgements;
he compiles and gathers legal rules and concepts in the context of a certain system.
Legal reasoning, social practice, argumentation