MARK WASHOFSKY

numerous examples of legal indeterminacy, cases where the existing law did not dictate the decision, where the ruling seems clearly a choice informed by the judge's political, cultural, or social values. But others respond, correctly, that the law contains many more"easy cases," questions which seem to admit of only one right answer, instances where the language of the legal texts constrains judges to reach decisions that, left to their own devices, they would rather not reach.” To be sure, such a loose definition of legal determinacy while it rules out some"wrong" conclusions, does not lead inevitably to the "right" one. And this brings us to the second theoretical commitment demanded by the conversational model: the acceptance that for a potentially large number of legal issues there is a plurality of legitimate solutions.

The thesis of"more than one right answer" is associated with an approach in jurisprudence called"law as practical reason." Its proponents'® argue that law is best understood as a species of practical reason, which has been accepted since the days of Aristotle as a valid approach to logic.'” As opposed to formal logic, which reasons from premises to conclusions, practical reason proceeds from ends to means. Unlike mathematics or precise science, which aim at an accurate description of a conceptual or ontological reality, practical reason seeks to justify a particular plan of action based upon a normative vision of"how things ought to be." The correctness of a"practical" syllogism lies not in its deductive validity but in its reasonableness: how satisfactorily does it achieve the goal for which it is designed? To say, with Chaim Perelman , that"legal reasoning is an elaborated case of practical reasoning" is to say, with John Dewey , that it is a logic not of formal syllogism but of discovery, a process of thinking which starts not from the premises but from a vague conception of the conclusion and which searches for principles or data that either support the conclusion or lead to intelligent choice among rival conclusions.'® Law as practical reason therefore eschews the discovery of"one right answer" in favor of a good sense judgment that one conclusion, among all that are possible, is best suited to secure an agreed-upon goal. Judicial reasoning, like logic generally, is an ordered discourse, but instead of working deductively, from rules to conclusions,"courts are led to

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