The analysis and evaluation of legal argumentation: approaches from legal theory and argumentation theory

In the past thirty years legal argumentation has become an important interdisciplinary field of interest. The study of legal argumentation draws its data, assumptions and methods from disciplines such as legal theory, legal philosophy, logic, argumentation theory, rhetoric, linguistics, literary theory, philosophy, sociology, and artificial intelligence. Researchers with different backgrounds and from various traditions are attempting to explain structural features of legal decision-making and justification from different points of view.
The authors describe how argumentation theorists, philosophers, legal theorists, and legal philosophers deal with these problems from different points of view. The authors distinguish three traditions in the study of legal argumentation: the logical, the rhetorical and the dialogical approach. Ideas about the analysis and evaluation of legal argumentation, developed by influential authors in the field, are examined. The contribution is concluded with a more extensive discussion of the pragma-dialectical approach to legal argumentation that integrates rhetorical and dialectical aspects of legal argumentation.