The structure of arguments by analogy in Law

Successful accounts of analogy in law have two burdens to discharge. First, they must reflect the fact that the conclusion of an argument by analogy is a normative claim about how to decide a certain case (the target case). Second, they must not fail to accord relevance to the fact that the source case was authoritatively decided in a certain way. We argue in the first half of this paper (Sections 2 to 4) that the common view of the structure of analogical arguments in law cannot overcome these hurdles. In the second half (Sections 5 to 7) we develop an original account that aims to succeed where others failed.