The Discursive Construction of Legal Reasoning: A Genre Study of the United States Supreme Court Opinions

This book presents a fine-grained and dynamic description of the discursive construction of legal reasoning in judicial opinions, drawing upon the Systemic Functional linguistic perspective of language and genre. It aims to explore the discursive resources in constructing legal reasoning across metafunctions, at different levels, and of various sizes.

This book contributes to the linguistic understanding of legal reasoning in judicial opinions and extends genre studies to large texts with complex and hierarchical structures. It presents an applicable model for a deep analysis of relations between legal reasoning and language. The findings of this research may also provide subject-specific knowledge for common law students in case reading and learning.