Retorica classica e giurisprudenza. il fondamento dialettico dell’argomentazione giudiziale

Rhetoric shows its nature when law is in action because it is originally con- stituted not as a logic of norms, but as a methodology of controversies. Searching for an appropriate method of settling a dispute, the classical culture inven- ts Rhetoric, that becomes an argumentative technique fully consistent with the legal structure of the fair trial. According to the statements of the most authoritative masters of Greek thought, like Plato and Aristotle, good Rhetoric arises from dialectics, which is the original method of philosophy, and must not be directed to the psychological persuasion of the audience, but to the logical check of the arguments in a controversial environment, such as hap- pens in the legal proceeding.