Can a judge err in reasoning, what is remedy?

A judge may err on the facts. He may err on the law. Both are familiar grounds of appeal. But a more exacting question arises. Where the facts are clear, and the applicable law is equally clear, can a judge still err in reasoning?

Legal reasoning can be described as the bridge between the material before the court and the conclusion reached. It is the process by which the court moves from the facts and the issues through the applicable law to reach a sound decision; it is the thread that stitches the facts, the issues, and the law into a coherent whole.

Once the facts have been properly established and the applicable law correctly identified, the range of legitimate outcomes narrows. What remains is not a field of discretion, but a confined space within which the judge must justify the conclusion reached.

In law school, legal reasoning is often taught through different schools of jurisprudence. The positivists insist on fidelity to source; the judge must apply the law as is, anchored in text of the statute. The natural law tradition insists that the application of law must cohere with justice, dignity, and the common good. The realist reminds the court that law operates within a lived context, and that its application must remain attentive to consequence and practical effect. Each of these traditions exerts influence on judicial reasoning. But can each, taken alone, be sufficient?

The Constitution resolves this question, and it does so comprehensively. It does not permit a judge to adopt any single school of legal reasoning as a fixed position. The positivist, natural law, realist, and other schools of legal reasoning are not competing approaches from which the judge selects. The Constitution brings their core insights together within a single framework.

The judge does not choose a school, he operates within a framework that draws from multiple traditions, limits their excesses, and requires that they function together in a structured and disciplined sequence. The movement from facts through law to conclusion is neither mechanical nor unconstrained. It is purposive and wholistic, and the conclusion it produces must be coherent and defensible on the record. A judgment that cannot satisfy that standard, has reasoned outside the constitutional framework of reasoning altogether.

The Constitution achieves this not merely by prescribing what the law is, but by prescribing how it is to be reasoned through. Article 259 requires purposive interpretation of the constitution, reading every provision as part of a coherent whole oriented towards its values and purposes.

What emerges is an inbuilt constitutional framework of legal reasoning or a basic structure for reasoning. The function is not merely to decide, but to construct the outcome through reason. A judge reasons from the record. The facts proved set the factual limits. The issues framed set the analytical limits. The law, as identified and interpreted, sets the legal limits, while the constitution provides the framework within which that reasoning must operate.

Cumulatively, these limitations form the guardrails of the highway of legal reasoning. While that highway may curve or meander to accommodate the development of the law or measured innovation, such reasoning remains bounded by the constitutional framework within which it must be undertaken.Where a judgment moves beyond those limits, the issue is one of justification. A departure from the established constitutional framework of reasoning must be explained on the face of the judgment. The court must show how that step is grounded in law. Without that, the reasoning cannot be said to be coherent.

Having that structure in mind, the question then arises: can a judge err in reasoning? More directly, can a judge reason beyond the record before him and beyond the constitutional framework that governs the exercise?

A judge holds office by reason of his capacity to reason. The authority of a judgment lies in its ability to show that the conclusion reached follows from the facts, the issues, and the law as applied through correct reasoning. The question, then, is not whether reasons have been given, but whether the correct reasoning has been applied. Where it has not, the judge has erred in reason. In other words, the judge must make it make sense.

-The writer is advocate of the High Court, managing partner at A.A.Khalif Advocates LLP