Abstract

This article is a response to four commentaries on the themes developed in "Thinking Like a Lawyer". Responding to Giovanni Battista Ratti, I acknowledge that analogical and precedential reasoning are often connected, but explain how and when they remain different. In response to Mauro Barberis, I develop further the distinction between the inapplicability of a rule and the overridability of an applicable one. In commenting on Jorge Rodriguez, I seek to explicate his analysis of defeasibility and burdens of proof. And in responding to Pierluigi Chiassoni, I focus on the distinction between hard and easy cases, and try to explain the premises on which such a distinction might depend.