SSRN Adds Research Network on Rhetoric

Legal argumentation is — or can be seen as — a branch of the age-old discipline of rhetoric, latterly “informal logic.” After all, people have been trying to persuade each other forever, whether in connection with rules or not. Though most lawyers rely on law school training, the discipline of actual practice and intuition as the instruments to guide and hone their rhetorical skills, some might wish to think directly about the art of persuasion itself. In which case, the new Rhetoric & Communication Research Network (RCRN) within SSRN’s Humanities Network should prove useful.

Law is more directly addressed, of course, within the SSRN’s Legal Scholarship Network. But there’s much in the new RCRN that speaks to law. Like the other research networks, the RCRN is divided up into a number of e-journals, to which you can subscribe. To give you a quick sense of what’s available that might appeal to some of you, I’ve picked more or less at random an article or two from some of them:

• Similarity, Precedent and Argument from Analogy, by Douglas Walton (University of Windsor) – Rhetorical Theory eJournal
• What is ‘Good Legal Writing’ and Why Does it Matter? by Mark K. Osbeck (University of Michigan) – Rhetoric Educator: Communication, Composition, Rhetoric, & Writing eJournal
• The NFL, Intellectual Property, and the Conquest of Sports Media by Eric E. Johnson (University of North Dakota) – Rhetoric & Public Discourse eJournal
• Ensuring an Impartial Jury in the Age of Social Media by Amy J. St. Eve and Michael A. Zuckerman (Duke Law & Technology Review) – Writing Technologies eJournal
• Argument Diagramming in Logic, Artificial Intelligence, and Law by Fabrizio Macagno (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Chris Reed (University of Dundee), Douglas Walton (University of Winnipeg)