In my experience with several lawyers, many of them argue almost entirely from a position of logical fallacies -- better to win via confusion of the argument th

In my experience with several lawyers, many of them argue almost entirely from a position of logical fallacies -- better to win via confusion of the argument than win via logical argument. Actually, appeal to tradition and appeal to precedent are subtly different things. "We must continue doing a thing because we have always done it" vs "In the past, the reasoning was sound to do a thing, perhaps it is still sound to continue doing that thing". One absolutely fascinating debate I read online between a non-lawyer and a top-15 US law school dean more or less ended up with the non-lawyer demolishing the lawyer's arguments by assigning every argument to a list of logical fallacies. It was quite poetic. However, the dean kept arguing that the non-lawyer wasn't making legal arguments. Which gives me serious doubts that the legal system is based on logical or even just rational thought. (if you are interested the debate is here between somebody called "Red County Bound" and "sandersmj", during the recent legal challenges over same-sex marriage, I found it to be one of the most illuminating arguments I could find online http://www.brambletonian.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=16509&st=0 http://www.brambletonian.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1650... )