The Five Types of Legal Argument

by Wilson Huhn

The Five Types of Legal Argument succeeds both as a work of legal theory and as a practical guide to legal reasoning for law students, lawyers, and judges.  Huhn introduces each concept separately, and from many parts Huhn develops an intricate and nuanced theory of what law is.  Huhn also shows readers how to identify, create, attack, and evaluate the five types of legal arguments (text, intent, precedent, tradition, and policy) and how to weave the different types of arguments together to make them more persuasive. The Second Edition of this book further develops both the theoretical and practical themes of the work. In this edition Huhn introduces two additional ways of attacking legal arguments, and in a new chapter he utilizes principles of deductive logic to demonstrate the validity of the theory of the five types of legal arguments.

The principal strength of this book is its clarity.  The book is written in plain language that is easily understood both by lay persons and professionals, and it is organized simply and logically.

Reviewers and legal scholars have described the book as “fascinating” and “masterful.”  The Five Types of Legal Argument is required reading at a number of leading American law schools, and it is recommended for anyone who wishes to understand how to construct and how to critique legal arguments. 

Genres: Law, Academic, Reference, Nonfiction, Social Science

227 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2002

Reviews

[Toviel · Rating 3 out of 5]

FIVE TYPES OF LEGAL ARGUMENTS feels like the sort of book a legal method/writing professor would assign their students with the express intent of assigning the reading out of order, and include an accompanying lecture to flesh out its concepts.

While Huhn does, in theory, describe the titular legal five arguments and how to use/identify them, the book suffers from a chaotic format. The author chooses to push most of the information not directly related to defining a specific term to the footnotes, which leaves the reader with a disjointed and choppy mess of a book. In some cases, the footnotes are just as long, if not longer, than the chapter they’re supposed to be accompanying. Case descriptions and judicial opinions suffer the most from this treatment, as the anything beyond the basic context is often left out of the main text entirely. Likewise, even though the book is aimed at law students, the book decides not to address how casebook authors also have biases towards legal arguments (f’ex, my Torts casebook is written by someone who emphasizes policy arguments).

Perhaps the book is meant to accompany other textbooks, rather than stand alone on its own strength, but it is difficult to recommend as-is. While useful information can be gleamed off the book, such as which arguments specific Supreme Court justices prefer in their decision making and how they might conflict with one another, FIVE LEGAL ARGUMENTS hardly constitutes a must-read for would-be lawyers. Looking up the five arguments through a search engine instead will provide the rough equivalent of the book’s material without much loss of detail and/or instruction.

[Rex · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is perhaps the most helpful book I've read in law school. It classifies legal arguments into five basic categories and briefly explains how each type of argument is used and how to attack each type of argument.

I especially like that the book notes that each of the different types of arguments--text, intent, precedent, tradition, and policy--embodies an underlying value of our legal system--objective proof of the law, popular sovereignty/personal autonomy, predictability/consistency, conformity to settled societal expectations, and flexibility to adapt to a changing society. Many legal conflicts reflect the inherent tension in these values.

While my own judicial philosophy is still unsettled, this book has at least allowed me to clearly see how legal arguments are structured and understand the values that undergird the debate.

I recommend the book to anyone--not just those within the legal community--as Huhn's plain-English approach is accessible for all and his explanation of legal argument will enable the reader to better understand today's most relevant legal issues.

[Danielle Bodunrin · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you ever need to know how to make solid arguments and counter arguments look, here’s your book!!

[Hà Pep]

Is normal argument different from Legal Argument?

[John Yelverton · Rating 1 out of 5]

The five different ways that you can do exactly what we tell you to do. Yeah, this book was awful.