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  5. Legal Argumentation

Legal Argumentation

Objectives

Available soon

General characterization

Code

33255

Credits

4

Responsible teacher

Luís Duarte de Almeida

Hours

Weekly - Available soon

Total - 0

Teaching language

Available soon

Prerequisites

Available soon

Bibliography

Available soon

Teaching method

Seminars. Each session will deal with a different point of the programme. For each topic there will be specific reading materials and excerpts of judicial decisions (accompanied by questions and exercises), which the students will be asled to read, and whose discussion they will be asked to prepare, in advance of class.

 


Evaluation method

Final exam (3 hours). 



 



During the semester (and if the number of students allows it), students will have the opportunity to (a) present, in writing, an analysis and critical reconstruction of an argumentative passage extracted from a judicial decision (selected by the coordinator of the curricular unit) and (b) orally discuss this analysis with the coordinator, in a public session. If the average classification obtained in both elements is positive, the student will be exempt from sitting the final exam, in which case that will be the final classification. If such students nevertheless decide to sit the exam, the final classification will be the highest between (i) the classification of the final exam and (ii) the average of the classification of the final exam and the classification obtained in the assessment described above. Only students who have attended and actively participated in at least 75% of the seminars can avail themselves of this possibility. The exam is compulsory in all other cases.


Subject matter


  1. 1. An introduction to argument analysis and reconstruction.

  2. 2. The fallacy of begging the question.

  3. 3. Arguments "ad absurdum".

  4. 4. Slippery slope arguments.

  5. 5. The use of disjunctions in legal argumentation.

  6. 6. Arguments "a fortiori".

  7. 7. Arguments on fundamental legal positions.

  8. 8. "Hume's Law" and the justification of normative conclusions.

  9. 9. Arguments from authority and the model of the legal "syllogism".

  10. 10. Arguments "a contrario."

  11. 11. Arguments by analogy.

  12. 12. Inductive and abductive arguments in law.