Legalism, in the Western sense, is the ethical attitude that holds moral conduct as a matter of rule following.
[1] It is an approach to the analysis of legal questions characterized by abstract logical reasoning focusing on the applicable legal text, such as a constitution, legislation, or case law, rather than on the social, economic, or political context.
Legalism has occurred both in civil and common law traditions.
Legalism typically also claims that the task of the judge is to ascertain the answer to a legal question by an essentially mechanical process rather than some Schmittian modality of sovereignty.
[citation needed] This philosophy of law-related article is a stub.