Aristotle is Long Dead But His Wisdom Rules Us from the Grave: A Comparison of the Application of Logic in Legal Reasoning in Common Law and Civil Law Systems

‘Logic’ is a science that deals with the principles and criteria of the validity of inferences and demonstration, or the formal principles of reasoning. It is said that the specific task of logic as a branch of knowledge is to study the forms of a valid argument and it has been posited that any study of legal reasoning is an attempt to expiscate and explain the criteria as to what constitutes a good or a bad, or an acceptable or an unacceptable, type of legal argument. A syllogism is defined as ‘a formal argument in logic that is formed by two statements and a conclusion which must be true if the two statements are true’. The syllogism is regarded as the logical and analytical framework for legal reasoning in the common law tradition. Aristotle’s contribution to logic, in particular his theory of syllogism, has been regarded as having an unparalleled influence on Western thought. This chapter analyses the veracity of the theory of syllogism as the framework for reasoning in common law reasoning and compares these outcomes to a civil law system, adopting Germany as an exemplar of the latter.