Arguments from fairness as described in Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_ are usually taken to aim at mitigating the strictness of the law or, in terms of procedure, to favour the defendant. This paper considers a more inclusive interpretation, that is, that arguments from fairness can work both ways. In the example given in the _Rhetoric,_ arguments from fairness are directed at a restrictive interpretation of the text. That may not be necessary however. Likewise, fairness may speak for the claimant. Two examples may (...) support this conclusion: a judicial speech by Hyperides, and the doctrine of issues appearing in Hellenistic school rhetoric. (shrink)

In the last decades, regional and global integration processes have made the traditional state-centred view of law less and less obvious. Recent discussions revolve around how to conceptually comprehend, critically reflect on and reasonably control these new developments in the global legal arena. The essays in this volume, written by young Central and Eastern European legal theorists and political scientists, contribute to ongoing discussions in our post-national era. The chapters include conceptual analyses, historical and comparative examples, as well as normative (...) discussions in legal theory, ethics, moral philosophy, constitutional theory, EU law and international relations. (shrink)

The paper discusses the nature and functioning of argumentum ad misericordiam, a well-known but less theorised type of argument. A monograph by D. Walton (1997) offers an overview of definitions of misericordia (which he eventually translates as ‘pity’), as well as the careful analysis of several cases. Appeals to pity, Walton concludes, are not necessarily fallacious. This view seems to be supported and further refined by the critical remarks of H. V. Hansen (2000), as well as the recent work of (...) R. H. Kimball (2001, 2004) and A. Aberdein (2016) focusing on the virtue ethical aspects of such arguments. There is, on this account, a difference between ad misericordiam arguments and fallacies, even though the former may be fallacious in some cases. In this paper I argue for a narrower concept of ad misericordiam, as distinguished from the more generic class of appeals to pity, limiting it to cases in which someone asks for the non-application of a certain rule, clearly relevant to their case, with reference to some (unfavourable) circumstance, which is, however, irrelevant for the application of the rule. (shrink)

The present article examines the role of narratives in rhetoric and jurisprudence, trying to understand the ancient system of ‘issues’ (staseis), an essential part of the rhetorical curriculum in antiquity, with the help of some basic notions of legal semiotics. After a brief reconstruction of the doctrine, I argue that narratives are essential to classical rhetoric, that the basic types of issues correspond to particular stories in and of the trial, and finally that the system of ancient rhetorical theory is (...) capable of giving an account of the narrativisation of the pragmatics of the trial. Then I turn to a cause célèbre of Roman law, the causa Curiana, trying to show that not only the trial itself but also subsequent (ancient and modern) debates concerning the case were shaped by some grand narratives, and that stories about the trial are likely to return to the court, where they may become part of the story of the trial. (shrink)

The present paper examines three parts of ancient school rhetoric: the issues, the topics, and the questions of style from the perspective of legal semiotics. It aims (1) to demonstrate the roles these have played and can play in the interpretation of legal discourses; and (2) to summarise what insights have been and can be gained from this classical tradition by contemporary legal research. It is argued that the promise of legal semiotics for rhetorical investigations is that it may help (...) to make sense of the functioning of the system of ancient rhetoric, and contribute to our understanding of how rhetorical tradition works, while the research of ancient rhetoric can explore a range of semiotic devices essential for lawyerly thinking, resulting in the knowledge of a richer framework of interpretation. (shrink)