  The subject of legal reasoning appears to occupy the more practical end of the spectrum of jurisprudential theorising. Surely if anything matters in our attempts to understand law, it matters how judges do and/or should decide cases, and that we have an account which adequately explains and can perhaps be used to guide or justify their activities. The recent history of legal philosophy abounds with many and various attempts to address these issues and others which have been viewed as falling within the ambit of legal reasoning. Is legal reasoning an activity which is exclusive to the adjudicative institutions of legal systems or is any reasoning about the law to be regarded as legal reasoning, no matter where or by whom it is undertaken? Does legal reasoning take on a special character when it is undertaken in courts and by judges? Are there special methods or modes of reasoning which are unique to or at least distinctive of the law, or is legal reasoning just like reasoning in any other sphere of human activity, distinctive only in the subject matter to which it is applied? This last question is particularly relevant to present concerns, as it is one task of this entry to discuss various views concerning whether and to what extent interpretation and coherence have a special role to play in legal reasoning, because of the nature of law itself. 