Abstract

Legal decision‐making interests theoreticians in our discipline largely in terms of how a legal decision is justified. In his book, Bruce Anderson (1996) has posited a distinction between how a decision is arrived at, on one hand, and how it is justified, on the other. Anderson seems to be suggesting that legal theory should set out to continue the work of the American realists, that is, to develop legal decision‐making as a process of discovery towards a solution. In my presentation, I will be looking at legal decision‐making as a process of finding or discovering knowledge. What I mean by “discovery,” however, is the discovery of new scientific knowledge. (The theory of science draws a distinction between proving and discovering knowledge.) I submit that for a justification to be valid the arguments comprising it ought to fulfill the logical conditions stipulated for the discovery of knowledge. In the present paper, I also hope to share with you the main ideas of a book I am currently writing on the subject.