New Rhetorics for Contemporary Legal Discourse

Presents a new way of thinking about the relationship between law and language Legal rhetoric is not confined to persuasion but to an understanding of law's organisation of its own system and its relationship with other jurisdictions. Bringing together an international range of common law and civil law scholars, this book draws on contemporary legal discourse to examine the shared practice of exemplarity and extraordinary judgments in both national and international fields of law. It takes a comparative approach, examining practice across a range of legal jurisdictions including the US, Russia, Portugal, Italy and the Czech Republic. In doing so, it opens up a new dialogue on the question of the hermeneutic practices of legal reasoning. In response to the changes in legal form and transmission that have been generated both by globalisation and by common law's irreversible encounter with the civilian methods of European law, New Rhetorics for Contemporary Legal Discourse develops new rhetorical approaches to law at a time when new legal forms are urgently required. Key Features - Brings together a range of common law and civil law scholars from countries including the US, Russia, Portugal, Italy, Czech Republic, Canada and Brazil - Invites the reader to rethink the value of legal rhetorics - understood as a broad field including argumentation, epistemology, and legal practice and experience - Introduces casuistry as a new perspective that is valuable also for civil law systems - Illustrates how single cases interpolate general norms Angela Condello is Assistant Professor of Legal Philosophy in the Law Department, University of Messina; she is also Adjunct Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Torino, where she holds a Jean Monnet Module on human rights and critical legal thinking within the European legal culture.