Law deliberately accepts suboptimal answers to maximize long-term institutional correctness.
Evidence
In accepting the inevitability and strategic or long-term desirability of some number of mistakes of mostly the right kind, the legal system’s use of burdens of proof, presumptions, standards of review, and principles of deference, perhaps especially the last, resembles the system’s use of rules and precedents, and resembles the legal system’s at least partial commitment to formality. It may also resemble the legal system’s willingness to make decisions on the basis of less than all of the best or available information. In all of these dimensions, the law, more than many other decision-making institutions, commits itself to accepting wrong or at least suboptimal answers, and it does so in the service of larger or longerterm institutional values, as well as service to the idea that the best way to get the largest number of correct decisions in the long term is often something other than attempting to make the best decision on every occasion. In operating in this way, law and legal reasoning may not be different in kind from other decision-making institutions, but they may differ in degree. At the heart of much of law’s use of its characteristic reasoning devices is its acceptance of the fact that the best decision is not always the best legal decision. — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 431
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Inductive legal generalization produces workable probabilities rather than absolute truths. — Ruggero J. Aldisert, Agatha D. Aldisert, Logic for Lawyers- A Guide to Clear…, 339; Rules function as rules only if they tolerate some suboptimal outcomes — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 223; Courts sometimes reach wrong outcomes to avoid bad future rules — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 548 (+3 more)
Related
- Rules function as rules only if they tolerate some suboptimal outcomes (similarity 0.86)
- Courts sometimes reach wrong outcomes to avoid bad future rules (similarity 0.83)
- Legal outcomes depend on variable choices and value judgments rather than absolutes. (similarity 0.81)
- Inductive legal generalization produces workable probabilities rather than absolute truths. (similarity 0.81)
- Legal inductions represent probabilities rather than absolute truths. (similarity 0.81)
- Legal reasoning yields probability rather than absolute mathematical truths (similarity 0.80)
- Rules that always yield to rule-free optimization cease to function as rules (similarity 0.80)
- Logical form and avoiding fallacies remain critical tools of persuasion (similarity 0.79)
- Law lacks fixed major premises unlike math and science (similarity 0.79)
- Literal application of legal rules sometimes produces absurd against-purpose outcomes (similarity 0.79)
- Inductive reasoning yields probability while deduction yields certainty (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Courts sometimes reach wrong outcomes to avoid bad future rules
#exemplifies(0.90) — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 548 - Rules function as rules only if they tolerate some suboptimal outcomes
#corroborates(0.85) — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 223 - Inductive legal generalization produces workable probabilities rather than absolute truths.
#expands(0.75) — Ruggero J. Aldisert, Agatha D. Aldisert, Logic for Lawyers- A Guide to Clear…, 339 - Legal reasoning yields probability rather than absolute mathematical truths
#expands(0.70) — Ruggero J. Aldisert, Agatha D. Aldisert, Logic for Lawyers- A Guide to Clear…, 242 - Legal inductions represent probabilities rather than absolute truths.
#corroborates(0.70) — Ruggero J. Aldisert, Agatha D. Aldisert, Logic for Lawyers- A Guide to Clear…, 550 - Literal application of legal rules sometimes produces absurd against-purpose outcomes
#exemplifies(0.60) — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 284