Eveline T. Feteris

A Survey of 25 Years of Research on Legal Argumentation

This essay discusses the developments and trends of research in legalargumentation of the last 25 years. The essay starts with a survey of thevarious approaches which can be distinguished: the logical approach, therhetorical approach, and the dialogical approach. Then it identifies varioustopics in the research, which constitute the various components of aresearch programme of legal argumentation: the philosophical component, thetheoretical component, the reconstruction component, the empiricalcomponent, and the practical component. It concludes with a discussion ofthe main trends in the research of the last 25 years.

A dialogical theory of legal discussions: Pragma-dialectical analysis and evaluation of legalargumentation

In this paper, the author describes a dialogical approach tolegal argumentation from the perspective of argumentationtheory. In a pragma-dialectical approach of legalargumentation, the argumentation is considered to be part of acritical discussion aimed at the rational resolution of thedispute. The author describes how a pragma-dialecticalanalysis and evaluation of legal argumentation can be carriedout.

The Analysis and Evaluation of Legal Argumentation from a Pragma-Dialectical Perspective

This paper shows how a theory of legal argumentation can be developed from a specific dialogical approach, a pragma-dialectical approach. It demonstrates how ideas from pragmadialectical theory on the analysis and evaluation of legal argumentation can be combined with ideas taken from legal theory. It describes how a model for the analysis and evaluation of legal argumentation can be developed and it specifies a research programme for legal argumentation from a pragma-dialectical perspective.

Argumentation from reasonableness in the justification of judicial decisions

In legal decision-making reasonableness plays an important role. In the literature, generally speaking, there is a consensus that reasonableness as a norm for judges in the application of law implies that they take into account a combination of different considerations of a normative and factual nature with the aim of reconciling the requirements of abstract formal justice and justice and fairness in the concrete case. Although reasonableness is considered to be an important reason for making an exception to a legal rule, in the legal literature little attention has been paid to the kind of arguments that can constitute a sound justification of such a decision.

Strategisch manoeuvreren in politieke cartoons met een visuele scenariometafoor

Een politieke cartoon kan worden opgevat als een overtuigingspoging waarbij een cartoonist instemming van zijn publiek probeert te verwerven met de visie dat het handelen van een politicus of een andere publieke persoon negatief beoordeeld moet worden. Om duidelijk te maken welke strategische keuzes cartoonisten maken bij hun keuze van argumenten en de ‘verbeelding’ daarvan in de vorm van een visuele metafoor als specifieke presentatietechniek, wordt in deze bijdrage de overtuigingspoging van een cartoonist geanalyseerd als een vorm van strategisch manoeuvreren. Uitgaande van het theoretische concept van ‘strategisch manoeuvreren’ zoals geformuleerd door Van Eemeren (2010) maak ik op basis van een analyse van de argumentatieve verplichtingen van een cartoonist duidelijk welke keuzemogelijkheden een cartoonist heeft om door middel van een visuele metafoor zijn negatieve beoordeling van het handelen van de politicus tot uitdrukking te brengen.

Introduction: Dialectical legal argument: Formal and informal models

The articles in this special issue are drawn from presentations given at a workshop on Dialectical Legal Argument: Formal and Informal Models , held December 12th, 1996 at the University of Tilburg, The Netherlands. The workshop was hosted by the Center of Law, Administration and Informatization of the university. The aim of the workshop was twofold. A specific aim was to bring together two research communities interested in dialectical models of legal argument: recent logically oriented research in AI & Law, and recent informal research within the pragmadialectical school of argumentation theory. The more general aim was to show that the fields of AI & Law and argumentation theory may well benefit from studying each other’s results.

The Logical Approach

In the study of legal argumentation, the approach with the longest tradition is the logical approach. The logical approach emphasizes the role of formal validity as a criterion of rationality for legal argumentation. In it various logical systems are developed to analyze and evaluate legal argumentation.

The Pragma-Dialectical Approach of Legal Argumentation

This chapter gives an overview of the pragma-dialectical approach to legal argumentation. The chapter provides a summary of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation and describes developments in the application of the theory to the legal context. It characterizes legal justification as an argumentative activity type and it analyses the role of the judge in terms of his function in the resolution of a difference of opinion. The different prototypical argumentative patterns in legal justification are discussed. The patterns are characterized as prototypical patterns that result from the obligations of courts to justify their decisions in clear cases and hard cases. It is specified which argument schemes have a function in the justification. For the different argument schemes it is investigated how the way courts react to different critical questions results in different argumentative patterns. On the basis of some representative examples of justifications in hard cases in which courts must interpret the legal rule, a description is given of implementations of prototypical argumentative patterns. Finally, prototypical patterns of weighing and balancing, that consist of a combination of different forms of justification, are discussed.

Habermas’s Discourse Theory and the Rationality of Legal Discourse

This chapter discusses the relation between Jurgen Habermas’s discourse theory and the rationality of legal discourse. In his discourse theory, Habermas sets out the conditions a rational discussion is required to meet. In the legal part of his theory on argumentation, Habermas describes how the rationality of legal discourse is related to the rationality of non-legal discourse. The aim is to establish the standards of rationality legal argumentation should meet from the perspective of a discourse theory in which the norms for rational discourse are specified. In his view, both forms of rationality are complementary: on the one hand, legal procedures can promote the rational quality of legal discourse on moral issues in relation to the idealized requirements of rational discussion; on the other hand, these idealized requirements should function as a standard for the rationality of legal procedures.

Epilogue: Main Trends in Research of Legal Argumentation

Research of legal argumentation concentrates on the justification of judicial decisions. The central question is how legal decisions can be justified in a rational way and what the soundness conditions are that such a rational justification should meet. In various disciplines, theories of legal argumentation have been developed that are important for the analysis of legal argumentation with the aim of evaluating the argumentation in light of such soundness conditions.