A timid defence of legal formalism

This chapter defends the perspective that law and legal reasoning differ from other reasoning because of their particular form and methods. The formality of law is the necessary source of its distinct authority. Without formality no authority. At the same time, the adherence to form and methods in legal reasoning by judges, practitioners, and scholars has consequences for how it is reasoned, what is relevant, and what is a reasonable outcome. The chapter further defends doctrinal legal scholarship as opposed to empiricism and theory. It argues that, as a legal scholar, if you do not engage with the formal legal discussion you do not meet the law and doctrinal work on its own terms. As a result, you do not easily have persuasive power. What remains is the possibility of a 'trickle-down-effect', meaning that your theoretical or empirical work is used by doctrinal scholars and 'translated' into useful knowledge for practitioners.