Legal Systems

Although the legal systems of England and the United States are superficially similar, they differ profoundly in their approaches to and uses of legal reasons: substantive reasons are more common than formal reasons in the United States, whereas in England the reverse is true. This distinction reflects a difference in the visions of law as an outward expression of the community’s sense of right and justice.

Substantive reasons, as applied to law, are based on moral, economic, political, and other considerations. These reasons are found both “in the law” and “outside the law,” so to speak. Substantive reasons inform the content of a large part of the law: constitutions, statutes, contracts verdicts, and the like. Consider, for example, defendants not guilty because what they did had no adverse effect on park quiet and safety.

Formal reasons are different in that they frequently prevent substantive reasons from coming into play, even when substantive reasons are explicitly incorporated into the law at hand. For example, when a document fails to comply with stipulated requirements, the court may render the document legally ineffective. A will requiring written witness may of that rule precludes from consideration substantive arguments in favor of the will’s validity or enforcement.

Legal scholars in England and the United States have long bemused themselves with extreme examples of formal and substantive reasoning. On the one hand, formal reasoning in England has led to wooden interpretations of statutes and an unwillingness to develop the common law through judicial activism. On the other hand, freewheeling substantive liberal that the texts of some statutes have been ignored altogether.