The Legal Mind: A New Introduction To Legal Epistemology Hardcover

Bartosz Brozek

How does a lawyer think? Does legal intuition exist? Do lawyers need imagination? Why is legal language so abstract? It is no longer possible to answer these questions by applying philosophical analysis alone. Recent advances in the cognitive sciences have reshaped our conceptions of the human mental faculties and the tools we use to solve problems. A new picture of the functioning of the legal mind is emerging. In The Legal Mind, Bartosz Brozek uses philosophical arguments and insight from the cognitive sciences to depict legal thinking as a close cooperation between three cognitive mechanisms - intuition, imagination, and language - and addresses the question of how to efficiently use these mental tools. This novel and provocative approach provides a fresh perspective on legal thinking and gives rise to important questions pertaining to the limits of legal interpretation and rationality in the law.

9781108493253

English

Cambridge University Press

31 January 2020

266

Bartosz Brozek is a full professor at the Faculty of Law and Administration and the director of the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow. Brozek is the author of twenty book monographs, editor of twenty-four volumes, and author of more than 100 research papers. He received numerous scholarships and awards, including the Humboldt Fellowship.

Broz ek takes us on an absorbing journey into the nature of reasoning, using the courtroom and its legal framework as a particularly revealing case study. The result is a highly original perspective on an old set of problems. The book is clear, fresh and insightful, as well as remarkably practical. It targets not just lawyers and logicians, but anyone who wonders how they figure things out.' Patricia Churchland, University of California, San Diego 'The Legal Mind is a well-written, highly engaging and uniquely innovative contribution to legal research. It provides afresh account of legal cognition, based on the integration of cognitive science, legal theory, and philosophy. Contemporary theories of mind provide a vantage point to examine how different human faculties (intuition, insight, imagination, emotion, language, abstraction, theorisation, logic) interact in legal cognition. Past and present approaches to legal reasoning and interpretation are critically reassessed, and linked to the new approach developed in the book. Strongly recommended for lawyers, legal theorists, and law students interested in expanding the awareness of what it means to know and apply the law.' Giovanni Sartor, University of Bologna