Research project co-financed by the Italian Ministry of University (years 2006-2008)
(excerpts from the Description of the project submitted to the Ministry)
By using as a starting point and as instruments for researching the outcomes of two previous projects (2002 and 2004) - among which the creation of a Research Centre, a scientific series and a website on Legal Methodology - it has now to be carried out an advancement of the studies focused on nature and suitability of the rhetorical discourse in legal and political experience. After determining the three main functions of rhetorics (description, demonstration, persuasion) the project wants to study their presence, features and suitability in different fields, investigated by the local teams. That is to say:
- Team of Padua: rhetorics and cognitional purposes in judicial speeches, with special regard to the figurated forms of rhetorical legal discourse.
-Team of Trento: rhetorics and legal reasoning in lawsuit, with special regard to the issues of contradictory and orality, and with a special widening on the so-called "telematical lawsuit".
-Team of Verona: connections between logical-epistemic and axiological level of the legal argumentation, with special regard to the use of "brocardi" and authoritative opinions; to the types of penal justification; to the use of ethical arguments in biolaw’s debates.
-Team of Catania: deliberating rhetorics and the dychotomy between signe and symbol, with special regard to legal-political discourse and control of the legal-political decisions, and with a special widening of the concept of citizenship in European legal system.
The research program will be carry out by arranging the topics mentioned as goals along two main lines, each with its own elements and criteria for verification as shown below:
THEORETICAL LINE. Focusing on the logical structure and heuristic possibilities of rhetorical-dialectical method. Here the studies we have already started thanks to previous funds will advance. They all refer to the re-evaluation of rhetorics as the way for setting ordinary language by means of a method in order to warrant conclusions in those fields where controversy cannot be neglected. The deepenings now planned as goals are: 1) the study of necessary conditions for reaching unambiguous meanings by means of the rhetorical method although the use of figures of speech; 2) the study of the order of judicial discourse (intended as the logical arrangement of its core linguistic elements) when it achieves three different functions: describing, proving and persuading. Here the research will be double: it will be historical as well as theoretical. It has to be determined, by the analysis of both the primary and the critical sources on legal rhetorics, the reticulum of the three functions (description, demonstration, persuasion) in a way capable of enlighting the formal structure of the speech act in each of those three functions. 3) the study of structure, functions and epistemic grounds of experience-based dicta, taking into particular account Aristotle’s notion of the so-called "endoxa"; 4) structure, functions and epistemic grounds of 5) study of the necessary contions for the extension of the rhetorical method to the political-deliberative discourse (this is also a traditional topic of rhetorics) through: a) the study of the relationship between deliberating rhetorics and the dychotomy between sign and symbol, with special regard to legal-political discourse and control of the legal-political decisions, and with a special attention to the concept of citizenship in European legal system; b) the study of the argumentative forms used in discussions about the ethical normative justification on bioethical topics and on alternative forms of criminal justice.
LINE OF APPLIED-RESEARCH. Particular attention will be given to the applicative check of the theoretical studies through: 1) the analysis and the study of normative and jurisprudential documents concerning specific topics elected as particular fields of research within the several line carried out by each Unit. Under this profile, in particular, we point: 1.1) researches of those scholars or judicials’ passages in which the judicial argumentation is based, depends on or however is characterized by the employment of metaphors, so that they, in those determinate contexts, can be defined as structural to the argumentation and, insofar as a sufficient degree of univocity has been reached, logically founding; 1.2) check of the compatibility of the rhetorical-dialectical model with the judicial praxis, particularly in civil lawsuit, and check of the consequences caused by the recent reforms of the so-called "telematical lawsuit" as well as of latest modifications occurred to the civil proceeding, on the rhetorical structure of the dialogical debate; 2) maintenance, development and enrichment of the structures already started up which constitute channels of interaction with the academic and professional worlds as well as specific instruments for highligting and for the check of the work in progress. It refers mainly to the Research Center on Legal Methodology already started up in previous cofinanced projects and whose activity is published in CERMEG website (www.cermeg.it). Under the CERMEG aegis specific publications have already been produced and others are in program in the biennium of the present project (i.e. the CERMEG series "Acta Methodologica", which today reach the second volume, has for the next 24 months two more issues in program); 3) some meetings with the associations of legal practitioners has to take place, involving students of law schools as well aspiring judges, lawyers and notaries - in order to share the results of the researches, to start their enforcement and to check them one started. From this point of view, the activity of the Pordenone Bar Association’s Law School it is noteworthy as, first in Italy, it organizes its didactics in close collaboration with the CERMEG with regard to the legal methodology studies. The intention is to prepare a formative standard for students of law school to export in other Law Schools (for this aim some contacts are in progress with the Trento Bar Association and Treviso Bar Association). The acknowledgment within such associations is considered a very important moment of verification and improvement of the theoretical studies.