Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2008
Abstract
Legal education fails students by not appreciating the rhetorical basis of legal reasoning and argumentation. I draw from Vico's "On the Study Methods of Our Time" and Llewellyn's legal realism; both argued that law and legal reasoning are exemplary sites of rhetoric. I suggest that contemporary cognitive studies of the metaphorical structure of human understanding and the initiatives of the "new legal realism" carry forward the insights of Vico and Llewellyn. This re-orientation corrects the shallow and instrumentalist outlook of most lawyers.
Publication Citation
UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 09-15.
Recommended Citation
Mootz, Francis J. III, "Vico, Llewellyn and the Task of Legal Education" (2008). Scholarly Works. 23.
https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/facpub/23