1 Neil McCormick’s Theory of Legal Reasoning and Its Evolution ARCHIWUM FILOZOFII PRAWA I FILOZOFII SPOŁECZNEJ JOURNAL OF THE POLISH SECTION OF IVR 2019/1 Michał Sopiński Michał Sopiński 1 1 University of Warsaw Neil McCormick’s Theory of Legal Reasoning and Its Evolution 1. Introduction Neil MacCormick’s theory of legal reasoning is based on the findings of two of his books: Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory (hereinafter: LR&LT) and Rhetoric and the Rule of Law (hereinafter: Rh&RoL) 2 . The former dates from 1978, the latter 2005, and from this fact it can be surmised that MacCormick’s legal-theoretical views crystallised gradually: they evolved over time and took their final shape thanks to establishing inter- national cooperation with other philosophers of law (among them, Robert Summers, Zenon Bankowski, Ota Weinberger, Robert Alexy, Aulis Aarnio, Aleksander Peczenik and Chaim Perelman), creative criticism, and the resulting extensive polemics 3 . Above all, however, it should be noted that the methodological significance of the existence of two different stages in MacCormick’s concept of legal reasoning is highlighted by his contemporary commentators 4 . In their view, this aspect of his theory justifies the use of a diachronic approach for its description. MacCormick himself seems to accept the methodological distinction of two phases in his concept of legal reasoning, being aware that a large part of his views has under- gone numerous changes over the years, and thus the differences between the basic assumptions are too significant to speak of their homogeneity 5 . 1 ORCID number: 0000–0001–5429–601X. E-mail: m.sopinski@wpia.uw.edu.pl 2 N. MacCormick, Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory, Oxford 1978; N. MacCormick, Rhetoric and the Rule of Law, Oxford 2005. 3 In the preface to Rh & RoL, McCormick lists a few dozen names of those who contributed intellectually to the formu- lation of his theory of legal reasoning. N. MacCormick, Rhetoric…, pp. 5–6. The foreword to the second edition of LR & LT contains a long list of critical remarks by other authors together with their polemical answers. N. MacCormick, Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory, Oxford 1994, pp. 17–19. 4 E.g. G. Pino, Neil MacCormick on Interpretation, Defeasibility, and the Rule of Law, “SSRN Electronic Journal” 2011, pp. 1–3, https://ssrn.com, accessed on: 7.02.2018; A. Schiavello, Neil MacCormick’s Second Thoughts on Legal Rea- soning and Legal Theory. A Defence of the Original View, “Ratio Juris” 2011/2, pp. 140–141; S. Bertea, MacCormick’s Latest Views of Legal Reasoning and the Positivist Concept of Law, in: A.J. Menéndez, J.E. Fossum (eds.), Law and Democracy in Neil MacCormick’s Legal and Political Theory: The Post-Soverign Constellation, Dordrecht 2011, pp. 88–89. 5 In the autobiographical note cited by William Twining, MacCormick distinguishes separate stages, whose summation makes his intellectual approach. W. Twining, Donald Neil MacCormick (1941–2009), in: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, Oxford 2012, p. 453. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36280/AFPiFS.2019.1.63ENG