ABSTRACT
Despite the often-repeated claim that ‘we are all realists now’, legal reasoning remains rule-driven, conceptual, deductive, and heavily path-dependent. Indeed, this remains true notwithstanding recognition that adjudication involves law-making and that ‘judge-made’ law is real. In this article, we argue that legal reasoning adheres to a phenomenon that is best described as ‘legal internalism’, which recognizes that doctrine and rules play three critical functions: ‘translation’, ‘saliencing’, and ‘normativization’. In this article, we show how legal internalism operates as a method of reasoning independent of both Legal Realism and Legal Formalism, recognizing an important role for rules, while at the same time accepting the need to balance reason with authority.
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Shyamkrishna Balganesh and Taisu Zhang, Legal Internalism as a Mode of Reasoning, American Journal of Jurisprudence. Published: 28 October 2025.
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