Legal reasoning by analogy

Please note that this post is from 2011. Evaluate with care and in light of later events.

My VISU presentation on reasoning in analogy in Warren and Brandeis’ famous 1890 law review article on privacy.

I think analogy reflects a desire to economize on thought. Thus, if we construct evidential reasoning on the basis of, say, Bayesian networks, then–instead of creating a whole new network to reflect a new situation–we simply build on an old network, and replace nodes with new facts, build a few nodes, and generally spiff things up.