Legal Argumentation and Evidence

✍ Scribed by Douglas N. Walton

• Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr (Txt)
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 393
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

A leading expert in informal logic, Douglas Walton turns his attention in this new book to how reasoning operates in trials and other legal contexts, with special emphasis on the law of evidence. The new model he develops, drawing on methods of argumentation theory that are gaining wide acceptance in computing fields like artificial intelligence, can be used to identify, analyze, and evaluate specific types of legal argument.In contrast with approaches that rely on deductive and inductive logic and rule out many common types of argument as fallacious, Walton s aim is to provide a more expansive view of what can be considered "reasonable" in legal argument when it is construed as a dynamic, rule-governed, and goal-directed conversation. This dialogical model gives new meaning to the key notions of relevance and probative weight, with the latter analyzed in terms of pragmatic criteria for what constitutes plausible evidence rather than truth.

✦ Table of Contents

Copyright......Page 5
CONTENTS......Page 6
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......Page 10
INTRODUCTION......Page 14
1 SPECIAL FEATURES OF ARGUMENTATION IN A LEGAL SYSTEM......Page 19
Legal Rules and Particular Cases......Page 21
Interpretation of Statutes and Documents......Page 24
Stages of a Trial......Page 27
Civil Law, Criminal Law, and Burden of Proof......Page 29
Evidence......Page 33
Relevance and Admissibility......Page 37
Testimony of Witnesses......Page 41
Expert Testimony......Page 43
Examination......Page 44
Dependence on Precedents......Page 47
2 FORMS OF ARGUMENT COMMONLYUSED IN LAW......Page 52
Argument from Analogy......Page 53
Argument from an Established Rule......Page 57
Argument from Sign and Abductive Argument......Page 60
Argument from Position to Know......Page 63
Argument from Verbal Classification......Page 69
Argument from Commitment......Page 71
Practical Reasoning......Page 74
Argument from Personal Attack (Ad Hominem Argument)......Page 77
The Slippery Slope Argument......Page 81
Other Important Forms of Argument......Page 84
3 CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE......Page 91
The McCormick Criterion......Page 92
The Jewish Classical Law Criterion......Page 95
Bentham on Circumstantial Evidence......Page 98
Patterson’s Criterion......Page 101
Wigmore on Direct Evidence and Autoptic Proference......Page 103
Wigmore on Circumstantial and Testimonial Evidence......Page 106
The Hope Head Case......Page 109
The Five Criteria Summarized......Page 111
How Useful is the Concept of Circumstantial Evidence?......Page 115
Logical Difficulties of Circumstantial Evidence......Page 117
4 PLAUSIBILITYAND PROBABILITY......Page 121
A Third Type of Reasoning......Page 123
Plausibility and Probability......Page 126
Wigmore on Logical Inference and Probative Value......Page 132
Locke on Plausibility and Degrees of Assent......Page 140
Bentham on Plausibility and Evidence......Page 142
Plausibility and Casuistry......Page 146
Plausible Reasoning in the Ancient World......Page 151
Carneades’ Theory of Plausibility......Page 156
Criteria and Applications of Carneades’ Theory......Page 159
Why the Neglect of Plausible Reasoning?......Page 164
5 THE DIALECTICAL FRAMEWORK OF LEGAL ARGUMENTATION......Page 169
Implicature and Conversational Postulates......Page 171
Rational Persuasion in the Trial......Page 174
Normative Models of Argumentation......Page 178
Persuasion Dialogue......Page 183
Other Types of Dialogue......Page 189
Peirastic Dialogue and Extastic Dialogue......Page 192
Relevance and Dialectical Shifts......Page 198
The Fair Trial and the Witch-Hunt......Page 202
A Dialectical Theory of Statutory Interpretation......Page 205
Argumentation Schemes, Fallacies, and Legal Logic......Page 212
6 A PLAUSIBILISTIC THEORYOF EVIDENCE......Page 217
Components of the New Theory......Page 218
Evidence and Argument......Page 223
The Probative Function......Page 232
Ancient Roots of the New Theory......Page 234
Advantages of The Plausibilistic Theory......Page 241
Scientific Evidence......Page 245
Logical and Legal Relevance......Page 248
Legal Evidence, Credibility, and Plausibility......Page 252
Expert Testimony as Evidence......Page 257
Problems and Conclusions......Page 261
7 RELEVANCE IN PERSUASION DIALOGUE......Page 266
Persuasion Dialogue......Page 267
Chaining of Arguments......Page 270
Rules of Dialogue and Fallacies......Page 276
The Fallacy of Irrelevant Conclusion......Page 278
The Method of Argument Extrapolation......Page 280
Testing an Actual Example......Page 284
How the Method Should be Applied......Page 287
Questions Raised......Page 289
Application to Legal Cases......Page 292
Arguments and Explanations......Page 297
8 MULTI-AGENT ARGUMENTATION AND CREDIBILITY......Page 300
Formal Dialogue Systems in Logic......Page 301
The Ad Hominem and Ad Verecundiam Fallacies......Page 305
Labeled Deductive Systems......Page 314
Multi-Agent Systems......Page 316
Adding Agents to Formal Dialectical Structures......Page 319
Evaluating Fallacies and Blunders......Page 322
How Should ‘Agent’ be Defined in Formal Dialectic?......Page 324
Dialectical Shifts and Relevance......Page 326
The Solution to the Problem......Page 331
Conclusions......Page 335
9 HOW TO USE THE NEW METHOD......Page 339
The New Method......Page 340
Inference Forms and Critical Questions......Page 343
Arguments Depending on Testimony and Credibility......Page 347
Verbal Arguments and Critical Questions......Page 352
The Trial as Persuasion Dialogue......Page 353
Argument Diagramming......Page 356
The Formal Structure of Diagramming......Page 360
Formalizing the New System......Page 363
The Subtleties of Peirastic Dialogue......Page 366
The Current Problems with Relevance......Page 368
BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 375
INDEX......Page 383
Back Cover......Page 393