By nature humans are endowed with powers of reasoning. Logic is the study of the uses of those powers. Intuitively ,we may have long acted on sound principles, only partly grasped. With care these principles can be brought to the surface by illustrating them with genuine controversies in the world of college students rather than with illustrations artificially devised for the purpose .

Law is of vital importance, touching the lives of all people. The effect of law also matters a great deal, and the costs of mistakes can be serious. In order to comply with the law it must be understood by those it affects, and to be accepted it must be explained in terms that are comprehensible by those to whom they are addressed. Moreover, the law must be applied in a way which is transparent and accountable. Clearly computer systems can assist with all these aspects, but they require clarity of meaning and soundness of reasoning: hence the importance of logic for law.
In the early days of the application of logic to the law there were some simplistic expectations: that it would be enough to represent the law as a logical theory and to deduce the consequences of that theory. This view proved too narrow, for the reasons we will discuss in this paper. We will identify some key uses of logic in law, by briefly describing some prominent historical work, mentioning some key papers reflecting the state of the art and finally pointing to some of the main current issues which we hope will be