Legalism, in the Western

Western world

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...

 sense, is an approach to the analysis of legal questions characterized by abstract logical reasoning focusing on the applicable legal text, such as a constitution

Constitution

A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...

, legislation

Legislation

Legislation is law which has been promulgated by a legislature or other governing body, or the process of making it...

, or case law

Case law

In law, case law is the set of reported judicial decisions of selected appellate courts and other courts of first instance which make new interpretations of the law and, therefore, can be cited as precedents in a process known as stare decisis...

, rather than on the social

Social

The term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms...

, economic, or political context. Legalism has occurred both in civil

Civil law (legal system)

Civil law is a legal system inspired by Roman law and whose primary feature is that laws are codified into collections, as compared to common law systems that gives great precedential weight to common law on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different...

 and common law

Common law

Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...

 traditions.

In its narrower versions, legalism may endorse the notion that the pre-existing body of authoritative legal materials already contains a uniquely pre-determined right answer to any legal problem that may arise.

Legalism typically also claims that the task of the judge is to ascertain the answer to a legal question by an essentially mechanical process.

See also

• Legal positivism
  Legal positivism
  Legal positivism is a school of thought of philosophy of law and jurisprudence, largely developed by nineteenth-century legal thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Austin. However, the most prominent figure in the history of legal positivism is H.L.A...
  
  
• Natural law
  Natural law
  Natural law, or the law of nature , is any system of law which is purportedly determined by nature, and thus universal. Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. Natural law is contrasted with the positive law Natural...
  
  
• Interpretivism