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Forensic rhetoric


Forensic rhetoric, as coined in Aristotle's On Rhetoric, encompasses any discussion of past action including legal discourse—the primary setting for the emergence of rhetoric as a discipline and theory. This contrasts with deliberative rhetoric and epideictic rhetoric, which are reserved for discussions concerning future and present actions respectively.

In contemporary times, the word forensic is commonly associated with criminal and civil law referring specifically to forensic science. It is important to note that the term forensic associated with criminal investigation exists because forensic (or judicial) rhetoric first existed.

An introduction of the three types of rhetoric (forensic, deliberative, and epideictic) occurs in Book I Chapter III of Aristotle's On Rhetoric. Discussion of forensic rhetoric is found in Book I Chapters X-XV, outlined as follows:

According to George A. Kennedy, rhetoric emerged as a response to legal freedoms introduced in Greece around 467BC. "Citizens found themselves involved in litigation... and were forced to take up their own cases before the courts. A few clever Sicilians developed simple techniques for effective presentation and argumentation in the law courts and taught them to others." Thus, trained capacity in speech-making and the theory about such speech-making exists because of legal exigencies.

The Stasis Doctrine, proposed by Hermagoras, is an approach to systematically analyze legal cases, which many scholars include in their treatises of rhetoric, most famously in Cicero’s "De Inventione." Encyclopedia author James Jasinski describes this doctrine as taxonomy to classify relevant questions in a debate and the existence or nonexistence of a fact in law. The Stasis Doctrine is incorporated in rhetoric handbooks today.


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