Principles of legal argumentation: Logic and Rhetoric

This book, written by Judge Alexandre Chini and Professor Marcelo Moraes Caetano, demonstrates that human reasoning is based on faculties not only to understand, but also to interpret REALITY. This, in turn, may present itself as something true (arrived at through formal logic) or plausible (achieved through rhetoric). Both forms of presentation are united both in the common purpose they share – conviction or persuasion – and in the ways of proposing or demonstrating what is acceptable to human reason to those to whom one wishes to prove something, through intellect or interpretation. By studying in detail valid arguments and their invalid counterparts in the civil and criminal spheres, the authors unveil practically all the fallacies that appear to be true, deconstructing them; they examine the importance of familiarity with the Portuguese language in sharpening critical thinking; and, in doing so, they present a concise yet thorough guide to the techniques by which, through dialectic (thesis and antithesis), perceptions of reality achieve their synthesis—a synthesis which it falls to the judge, in the courts and in life, to acquire and determine in accordance with a sense of justice.