Each concept is read twice: whether the approach carries it, and whether the approach's own sources claim it. A concept that is absent and was never claimed is a gap in the field rather than a failure of the work, and is marked out of scope.
Reasoning by Analogy
AbsentNot claimed · out of scopeDefinition · Edward H. Levi, An Introduction to Legal Reasoning (1949)
This procedure decides a new case by comparison with already decided ones. The judge states which features of the earlier case are relevant and which are not, and that selection is generally where the reasoning happens.
Analysis
The corpus is consumed once, as the input from which principles are extracted. No new case is then decided by comparison with the earlier ones; the principles do that work instead.
Holding vs. Dicta
AbsentNot claimed · out of scopeDefinition · Arthur L. Goodhart (1930)
This distinction separates the part of a past decision that binds later cases, the holding, from the remarks made along the way, the dicta, which do not. Without a way to tell the two apart, a body of precedent cannot indicate which of its own decisions are actually binding.
Analysis
Preference records generally carry no structure separating what a judgment established from what was incidental to it, and the induction treats all of it alike.
Distinguishing and Overruling
AbsentNot claimed · out of scopeDefinition · Common-law practice
These two moves let a later court revise the record: distinguishing confines an earlier precedent to its own facts, and overruling sets it aside altogether. Both are done openly and with reasons stated, which is what keeps a body of case law open to revision.
Analysis
The derivation from cases to rules runs once and then stops. After the principles are extracted, later cases generally cannot revise what earlier ones established, and the result is a snapshot of the corpus at one moment rather than a record that stays open.
Paradigm Cases and Maxims
AbsentNot claimed · out of scopeDefinition · Albert R. Jonsen & Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry (1988)
This method anchors judgment in paradigm cases, i.e., clear cases on which agreement is easy, and in the short maxims drawn from them. A hard case is then settled by asking how far it sits from the paradigms, rather than by deduction from a general principle.
Analysis
No case is singled out as a paradigm. Cases enter only in aggregate, as evidence for a principle.