  Two questions arise about analogical reasoning. Firstly, by what process does a decision-maker identify the ‘common characterisation’ between the case at hand and the analogous one?  Secondly, what type of justificatory force does the common characterisation provide?  On the first question, just as no two cases are identical in every respect, so no two cases are such that some common characterisation of the facts cannot be found. But not every case is thought to provide an analogy, so what limits or directs the selection of analogies?  The answer to this question flows into the issue of the justificatory force of analogies.  What sort of reason does an analogy provide for deciding the instant case in the same way?