The Tapestry of Reason: An Inquiry into the Nature of Coherence and its Role in Legal Argument

644 Pages·2015·2.3 MB·English

by  Amalia Amaya

160mm (156 + 2x2mm boards)
8mm
The Tapestry of reason
An inquiry into the nature of coherence
and its role in Legal Argument
Amalia Amaya
66mm 8mm

THE TAPESTRY OF REASON
In recent years coherence theories of law and adjudication have been
extremely influential in legal scholarship. These theories significantly
advance the case for coherentism in law. Nonetheless, there remain a num-
ber of problems in the coherence theory in law. This ambitious new work
makes the first concerted attempt to develop a coherence-based theory of
legal reasoning, and in so doing addresses, or at least mitigates these prob-
lems. The book is organized in three parts. The first part provides a critical
analysis of the main coherentist approaches to both normative and factual
reasoning in law. The second part investigates the coherence theory in a
number of fields that are relevant to law: coherence theories of epistemic
justification, coherentist approaches to belief revision and theory-choice in
science, coherence theories of practical and moral reasoning and coherence-
based approaches to discourse interpretation. Taking this interdisciplinary
analysis as a starting point, the third part develops a coherence-based model
of legal reasoning. While this model builds upon the standard theory of
legal reasoning, it also leads to rethinking some of the basic assumptions
that characterize this theory, and suggests some lines along which it may be
further developed. Thus, ultimately, the book not only improves upon the
current state of coherence theory in law, but also contributes to the larger
debate about how to articulate a theory of legal reasoning that results in
better decision-making.
European Academy of Legal Theory Series: Volume 12
EUROPEAN ACADEMY OF LEGAL THEORY
MONOGRAPH SERIES
General Editors
Professor Mark Van Hoecke
Professor François Ost
Titles in this Series
Moral Conflict and Legal Reasoning
Scott Veitch
The Harmonisation of European Private Law
edited by Mark Van Hoecke & Francois Ost
On Law and Legal Reasoning
Fernando Atria
Law as Communication
Mark Van Hoecke
Legisprudence
edited by Luc Wintgens
Epistemology and Methodology of Comparative Law
edited by Mark van Hoecke
Making the Law Explicit
The Normativity of Legal Argumentation
Matthias Klatt
The Policy of Law
A Legal Theoretical Framework
Mauro Zamboni
Methodologies of Legal Research
Which Kind of Method for What Kind of Discipline?
edited by Mark van Hoecke
Objectivity in Law and Legal Reasoning
edited by Jaakko Husa and Mark van Hoecke
An Introduction to Comparative Law Theory and Method
Geoffrey Samuel
The Tapestry of Reason
An Inquiry into the Nature
of Coherence and its Role
in Legal Argument
Amalia Amaya
OXFORD AND PORTLAND, OREGON
2015
Publi shed in the United Kingdom by Hart Publishing Ltd
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© Amalia Amaya 2015
Amalia Amaya has asserted her right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
Hart Publishing is an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc.
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ISBN: 978-1-84946-070-5
ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-78225-516-1
A mis padres

Acknowledgements
This book is based on my PhD dissertation, which I was privileged to do
at the European University Institute. I am deeply grateful to Massimo La
Torre, my PhD supervisor at the European University Institute, for his
unwavering confidence and support through the many years it took me
to write the dissertation of which this book is a descendant. To Manuel
Atienza I owe a great personal and intellectual debt. He first led my way
into philosophy of law when I was law student at the University of Alicante
and, afterwards, as PhD supervisor, worked indefatigably on the disserta-
tion, providing me with vigorous, but respectful, direction. The feedback
given by Robert Alexy and Giovanni Sartor, as members of the PhD exam-
ining board, was precious for turning the dissertation into a book. This
work would be very different had I not had the opportunity to spend some
years at Harvard University. I am most grateful to Philippe Alston for his
inestimable help in facilitating the transition from Florence to Cambridge
as well as for his encouragement thorough the whole project.
Some of the ideas first elaborated in the PhD dissertation migrated and
grew in my SJD dissertation, to finally return to this manuscript. I am
greatly indebted to my SJD supervisor, Frederick Schauer, for his sustained
guidance and support over the years I have been engaged in this project.
I have learnt a lot – and this manuscript has greatly benefited—from his to-
the-point criticisms and insight. I am also very grateful to Noam Chomsky
and Robert Stalnaker who, as field supervisors of the SJD, devoted much
time and energy in helping me to grasp many of the philosophical and
linguistic problems discussed here and provided exceedingly valuable com-
ments on several chapters of this book. For extensive discussion on some
of the topics covered in this book I should thank Catherine Elgin, who
also provided very helpful suggestions as member of the SJD examining
board. The criticism received from Barbara Spellman, also a member of the
SJD examining board, was very useful for improving on the psychological
dimensions of the argument developed here.
This book is deeply interdisciplinary, and it would have been impossible
for me to undertake a project of this nature without the generous help of
many people. For useful discussion, I should thank Josep Aguiló, Arthur
Applbaum, Jason Baehr, Scott Brewer, John Deigh, Michael Glanzberg,
Peter Godfrey-Smith, Daniel González, Susan Haack, Irene Heim, Christine
Korsgaard, Richard Moran, Charles Nesson, Robert Nozick, Vlad Perju,
Hilary Putnam, Larry Sager, Dan Simon, Paul Thagard, Peter Tillers,
William Twining and Mark Van Hoecke. I am very grateful to Ronald
viii Acknowledgements
Allen, Floris Bex, Jorge Cerdio, Juan Antonio Cruz, Marcelo Ferrante,
Hendrik Kaptein, Henry Prakken, Rosella Rubino, David Sosa, Alex Stein,
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, German Súcar and Bart Verheij for valuable
comments on writing material that have been incorporated, some way or
another, into this manuscript. Special thanks to Atocha Aliseda, Michal
Araszkiewicz, Carmen Curcó, Maksymilian del Mar, Maite Ezcurdia,
Miguel Angel Fernández, Richard Heck, Ho Hock Lai, Juliano Maranhão,
Gustavo Ortiz, James Pryor, Victoria Roca, Aldo Schiavello and Moises
Vaca for their suggestions and comments on previous drafts of several chap-
ters. For enjoyable discussions and sound advice on coherence and beyond,
I am very grateful to Larry Laudan, who commented on several portions of
the manuscript as well. I am also much obliged to Pablo Navarro, for his
extremely kind invitation to devote an issue of Discusiones to the discussion
of my work on legal coherentism. The criticisms raised by the contribu-
tors to that volume, namely, Manuel Atienza, Guillermo Lariguet, Juliano
Maranhão, Claudio Michelon, Cristina Redondo and Aldo Schiavello,
force me to clarify my views on coherence and law and to revise them in
significant ways.
Some parts of this work were discussed at the Philosophy of Law Seminar
at the University of Alicante, the SJD colloquium at Harvard Law School,
the Graduate Fellows’ Seminar at the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics
at Harvard University, the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy of Law
and Social Philosophy at Cracow, the Conference on Evidence and Law
at Darmouth College, the Noûs Group at the University of Costa Rica,
the Practical Philosophy Seminar and the Research Fellows Seminar at the
Institute for Philosophical Research of the National Autonomous University
of Mexico, the First Latin American Conference on Legal Epistemology at
the University of Los Andes and the University of Texas School of Law
at Austin. The suggestions and discussions with the participants in these
forums greatly aided me to develop the ideas presented here. I benefited a
great deal from discussion with the participants of a Byse Workshop that I
gave on coherence in evidential reasoning at Harvard Law School as well
as from discussion with students at a number of graduate seminars I taught
on coherentism while writing this manuscript at the National Autonomous
University of Mexico, the University of Costa Rica, the National University
of Costa Rica, the National University of the South and the European
Academy of Legal Theory.
For research support I am very grateful to The Gil Albert Institute,
La Caixa Foundation, Harvard Law School, the Edmund J. Safra
Center for Ethics, the Spanish Ministry of Education and the European
University Institute. The Institute for Philosophical Research at the National
Autonomous University of Mexico, my home institution, has been a won-
derful place to be at the last stages of this project. Not only has it provided
a friendly and stimulating working environment but it has also supported