Description

How does a lawyer think? Do lawyers need a lot of imagination? Why is legal language so abstract? Does legal intuition exist? 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: A New Introduction to Legal Epistemology (PDF), author Bartosz Brożek uses insight from the cognitive sciences and philosophical arguments to depict legal thinking as close cooperation between 3 cognitive mechanisms – imagination, intuition, and language – and addresses the question of how to efficiently use these three mental tools. This provocative and novel 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.