Reason in Law
A female international student moves into a one-bedroom apartment in a complex near the university. She is not yet fluent with her English language skills, and she has signed into a 12-month lease under a landlord who is fully aware that this tenant is occupying an apartment that is in need of a number of repairs, including a leaking toilet, a broken front door lock, and significant mold. The student, unfamiliar with housing codes, landlord responsibilities, and tenant rights, hears about an office that provides legal counseling to university students concerning such matters. Following the guidelines of legal reasoning will result in a decision that will resolve the issue to best benefit the tenant as a client. As an assistant for the ASOSU law office, I believe that anyone interested in pursuing a career in the political or legal fields needs to read Reason in Law by Lief H. Carter and Thomas F. Burke. This book examines the meaning behind legal reasoning and how it applies to those involved in settling conflicts and maintaining a functioning society. Carter and Burke have organized the book into six main chapters that discuss the traditional methods of social order and its present-day procedures:
1. What Legal Reasoning Is, and Why It Matters;
2. Change and Stability in Legal Reasoning;
3. Statutory Interpretation;
4. Common Law;
5. Interpreting the United States Constitution; and
6. Law and Politics.
Every chapter ends with examples of illustrated cases in which the concepts discussed in the preceding sections are portrayed through transcripts of famous trials. However, the authors often stress that most legal disputes are settled without ever having to step inside a courtroom. This practice of law most accurately describes my internship in which situations, such as the landlord/tenant issue above, often arise and are settled without a courtroom trial. Through each chapter in Reason in Law that discusses the historical and applicable uses of law and legal reasoning, I will compare and evaluate how my internship has related to the central themes of the book.
Chapter 1- What Legal Reasoning Is, and Why It Matters
This chapter provides a general overview of law, politics, and why legal reasoning is important. Law is defined as being the "language that lawyers and judges use when they try to prevent or resolve problems -human conflicts- using official rules made by the state as their starting point" (Carter and Burke, 6). These "official rules" help to settle disputes between parties and to maintain social order, but before any of that occurs, what first must be established is the events that led to the conflict. "Much of conflict-settling work involves deciding what happened" (Carter and Burge 7). In my internship, we require that all new clients bring a detailed, written summary of events relevant to their issue. Legal reasoning then comes into play in which it must be decided what to do with these facts once the lawyer "knows" them (Carter and Burke, 7). The following is a list of the four elements that are combined to form a legal opinion: the established facts; the laws and rules that bear on the case; the social background relevant to the issue; and the widely shared moral values and social principles that are applied as additional support (Carter and Burke, 9). This basic order is common practice in legal reasoning, however, as discussed in chapter two, decisions are not always simple by which to come.
Chapter 2- Change and Stability in Legal Reasoning
Chapter two discusses the law and its reliant use of words; however, the law can be complicated, unpredictable, and distinctly applicable. The chapter is divided into four sections in which the authors analyze various reasons for the misinterpretation of the law. First, as important of a role the law is to maintaining social order, the language used in law does not always result in "correct answers to contested legal questions" (Carter and Burke, 23). Words are ambiguous, vague, and often confusing. The language used in law may constitute different meanings, depending on the context. For example, depending on how the lease of the apartment was written, the language used may result in various outcomes for the client. Second, on a positive note, "this uncertainty and ambiguity benefits us more than it harms us" in that the language of law allows for both parties to believe the ruling could be in its favor (Carter and Burke, 28). The ambiguity and vagueness in the lease could potentially work in the client's favor. If the law were biased toward a certain side, such as the landlord, then there would be no need for a trial because the losing party, the tenant, would have no chance. Therefore, "judges must choose legal clarity and stability at the expense of other values" (Carter and Burke, 29). Perhaps this type of lease was used on a tenant in the past. This follows that when the law is unclear, then "stare decisis" applies in which a judge decides according to two types of precedents: vertical or horizontal. Vertical stare decisis follows that all courts must adhere to the rulings of those above it, with the United States Supreme Court being the highest, final word of the law (Carter and Burke, 29). Horizontal stare decisis is the "binding force of a precedent on the court that created it over time" (Carter and Burke, 29). In other words, a judge will decide on a ruling based on the same decision of a previous yet similar case. This ensures five values that society can rely upon, which includes stability, protection of reliance, efficiency in the administration of justice, equality, and the image of justice (Carter and Burke, 30). Finally, there are some "general and inevitable characteristics of law that make it forever changing, never perfected" (Carter and Burke, 23). Society changes everyday, and laws that were once applicable may seem discriminatory, bias, or prejudice today. To help relieve some of the misinterpretation, the professional rules provides a six-stage model of evaluating reasoning from prior examples and its effect on the decision-making process: 1. Reasoning by example; 2. Examples in law; 3. Three-step process of reasoning by example; 4. How reasoning by example perpetuates unpredictability in law; 5. An illustration of unpredictability in law; and 6. Reasoning by example facilitates legal change (Carter and Burke, 24-27). These methods of taking into account prior examples coincides with the topic of the next chapter in which the origins of Common Law are discussed.
Chapter 3- Common Law
As discussed in chapter two's concept of horizontal stare decisis, it is important to keep the tradition of referring to past precedents in deciding legal disputes. This prevents instability in legal decisions and equality of the rules under which society must live. In common law cases, judges "refer only to cases other judges decided in the past and the doctrines that have emerged from them" (Carter and Burke, 35). Many of today's common laws are reminiscent to those that date back to medieval England. As interesting as it is to read about the historical origins of common law, my internship as a legal assistant is most relevant to the concepts in the following chapter in which the meaning and relevance of statutes are discussed.
Chapter 4- Statutory Interpretation
Unlike common law, statutes are rules that are written and enacted by elected legislators and representatives. In the law office, we frequently refer to the Oregon Revised Statutes when assisting a client with legal issues, such as landlord-tenant disputes. This chapter focuses mainly on the four commonly misguided approaches that judges use to interpret statutes in case trials. First, judges often interpret statutes literally, following the words exactly as it is written. The problem with this approach is that language is ambiguous, as previously discussed in chapter two. Second, judges follow the golden rule in which statutes are interpreted in a way that "should follow the grammatical and ordinary sense of the words… unless that would lead to some absurdity, or some repugnance or inconstancy" (Carter and Burke 73). The dilemma arises when the words themselves fail to offer clarity of the rule. Another method is when judges use canons of statutory construction in which a set of rules are devised to help interpret the rules. Unfortunately, these additional rules can become misinterpreted further disabling the decision-making process. Finally, when judges are unclear about a statute they will attempt to determine what the legislature "intended" the words to mean (Carter and Burke, 77-78). The legislators' intentions could result in various outcomes when applied to the statute. When faced with a dilemma regarding the interpretation of a statute, the authors suggest that judges should follow precedents when the justification of stare decisis so dictate. However, this is not always followed as in the focus of the next chapter regarding the US Constitution.
Chapter 5- Interpreting the US Constitution
The Constitution is often referred to as the "Supreme law of the land" in which the language of our forefathers (and those who have subsequently amended revisions) has dictated the fundamental freedoms under which society live. Conventional legal reasoning should apply when interpreting the Constitution because, as the authors quote Justice Charles Evans Hughes, "the Constitution is what the Judges say it is" (Carter and Burke, 105). This means that, often under political pressure, judges have been known to improvise the Constitution in ways that differ from the document's true intent. The best example provided for this type of issue is in the authors' discussion of the controversy in the 2000 Presidential election results. As known from the media spectacle of the event, this inconsistency is troublesome as the fundamental structure of politics and the law lies in the US Constitution.
Chapter 6- Law and Politics.
Finally, the authors conclude by defining politics and the connections between how it applies to the law. Politics is described as "the many things we do in our public and collective lives to build and maintain communities" (Carter and Burke, 127). It is important to regard legal reasoning when making decisions that will affect the community. This applies to all types of disputes, including those that affect the clients of the ASOSU Law Office. As this chapter analyzes the relationship between law and politics, my internship has provided meaningful insight of the relationship between student advocacy and university politics.
Internship Experiences
As a transition into my own experiences as a legal intern, Reason in Law often supported views that were similar to the policies of the ASOSU Law Office. For example, chapter one discusses law as the "process of preventing or resolving conflicts between people" (Carter and Burke, 5). The lawyers at my internship work to settle disputes between conflicting parties and also offer advice on preventing future conflicts from occurring. As portrayed in the landlord-tenant scenario, "the law favors those who know from experience how to manipulate the system, such as landlords…against their more naïve or inexperienced opponents," such as international students (Carter and Burke, 3). When the tenant seeks advice at the Law Office on what she should do, the four elements of legal reason apply. First, the facts are established in the initial meeting and my transcription of the appointment becomes an important resource of the facts. In addition, the lawyer reviews a copy of the lease agreement that the tenant signed. "The law requires the ability to see specifics and to avoid premature generalizing and jumping to conclusions" (Carter and Burke, 5). By analyzing the fine-print language of the lease, the lawyer will be able to determine the best possible options available for the tenant. Second, the lawyer will refer to the laws and rules that bear on the situation. If the landlord is in violation of statutory housing codes, as described in chapter four, then the tenant will not be responsible for the repairs. At this point, my position as an intern involves drafting a demand letter to the landlord that states the situation and the best negotiable solutions in order to resolve it.
In addition, chapter two discusses the law and its reliance on words. I was hired as an intern because the position stresses exceptional communication abilities. If the landlord fails to respond to the letter, then the case may go to trial in which the lawyer would provide a script for the tenant to best represent herself in the courtroom. This can result in a potentially more serious outcome as trials are used as the last resort. If a settlement can't be negotiated or either party refuses to give up, then the state and government get involved, which may result in a significant fine or jail term. But perhaps the issue may not even go this far.
Chapter six was also comparable to the reading because there is less governmental politics involved in the law office. However, there is a great deal of University politics, as well as pressure from the ASOSU government. University politics states that the ASOSU Law Office may not advise a client who is in a dispute with another university member, which includes students, faculty, and staff. The legal reasoning justifying this rule is that it would be a conflict of interest since our funding is provided through incidental fees charged to all students. As the law is never perfect, so too is this rule when students find themselves in a bind. For example, the tenant of the one-bedroom apartment may be seeking assistance against her landlord who happened to have finished some graduate courses the year before. Although no longer an enrolled student, assisting the tenant would be in violation of the rules. Therefore, we would have to refer her to seek representation elsewhere.
Closing Thoughts
This book brought up issues that closely fit into my experiences as an intern at the ASOSU Law Office. While Reason in Law focused mainly on legal disputes that are settled with a trial, the reasoning behind legal decisions still applies outside of the courtroom. Whatever the outcome for the tenant, the decision will in no doubt be determined by considering precedent rulings. As a legal intern, I have continually observed and experienced the four basic elements used to form a legal opinion while assisting the attorney during appointments with clients. For anyone considering a career in the legal field, I would highly recommend this book to help introduce the hopeful lawyer with the decision-making process.
Bibliography
Carter, Lief H. and Burke, Thomas F. Reason in Law [6th edition]. Longman, 2002.
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