This book has a completely original theme, or set of themes. It offers first a new way of analyzing styles of legal reasoning—between more "formal" and more "substantive" styles—that is a major contribution to jurisprudence in its own right. The authors then go on to demonstrate in detail the differences in legal reasoning—and in the legal systems as a whole—between England and America, and suggest that the English is a much more "formal" system and the American a more "substantive." Finally, the book explores a wide range of cultural, institutional, and historical factors relating to the two legal systems.