Preface.- Part I: The Main Argument.- 1  Introduction.- 2  What Is a Source of Law?.- 3  Sources and Reasons.- 4  Legal Scholarship as a Source of Law.- 5  Formalism and the Use of Legal Scholarship.- 6 Normative Questions.- 7. Taking Stock.- Part II: Developments.- 8. Sources of Law are not Legal Norms.- 9. Legal Arguments from Scholarly Authority.- 10. Legal Scholarship as the Subject Matter of Jurisprudence.- 11. Legal Sciences and Its Role in Legal Reasoning.- 12. Concluding Thoguhts: Anatomy, Self-containment, and self-sufficiency.

This book offers a philosophical analysis of the role played by legal scholarship in the written judicial decisions of different Western legal systems. Based on a positivist (and, more specifically, Hartian) theory of law, the book discusses the concept of a source of law and the possibility of including within that concept the writings of legal scholars. It also discusses the concept of authority and the structure of authority-based arguments, such as those that judges often employ when referring to legal scholarship in their judgments.