This is an outline of a coherence theory of law. Its basic ideas arereasonable support and weighing of reasons. All the rest is commentary. Thesewords at the be... » 

This is an outline of a coherence theory of law. Its basic ideas arereasonable support and weighing of reasons. All the rest is commentary. Thesewords at the beginning of the preface of this book perfectly indicate what OnLaw and Reason is about. It is a theory about the nature of the law whichemphasises the role of reason in the law and which refuses to limit the role ofreason to the application of deductive logic. In 1989 when the first editionof On Law and Reason appeared this book was ground breaking for severalreasons. It provided a rationalistic theory of the law in the language ofanalytic philosophy and based on a thorough understanding of the resultsincluding technical ones of analytic philosophy. That was not an obviouscombination at the time of the books first appearance and still is not. Theresult is an analytical rigor that is usually associated with positivisttheories of the law combined with a philosophical position that is not naturallaw in a strict sense but which shares with it the emphasis on the role ofreason in determining what the law is. If only for this rare combination OnLaw and Reason still deserves careful study. On Law and Reason alsoforeshadowed and influenced a development in the field of Legal Logic thatwould take place in the nineties of the 20th century namely the development ofnonmonotonic defeasible logics for the analysis of legal reasoning. In thenew Introduction to this second edition this aspect is explored in some moredetail. «