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.