Judicial Reasoning

Judicial reasoning is always result orientated . . . . Some law students are distressed to find that judicial reasons generally conceal conclusions . It seems perhaps that the judges are guilty of some kind of fraud. In my own view, result orientated reasoning is inevitable, and indeed desirable. Judges cannot become mere automata drawing in facts and dispensing inevitable conclusions. For the same reason they cannot be replaced by computers. The settlement of human disputes is a human process, and it is fortunate that it cannot be automated . The
fact that the reasoning of judges is open to critical analysis does not imply that their decisions are perverse or arbitrary . It is no easy task to explain a decision, as anyone knows who has tried to do it . Moreover, critical analysis of past decisions is as often a technique of arguing for future development of the law as a genuine assessment of the decision . Criticism of former decisions is essential to the flexibility of the common law.

Source: S. M. Waddams, Introduction to the Study of Law (1979), pp. 107-108