Learning objectives
The course will examine the conceptual techniques used in the past in legal disputes, in order to let the students understand and master the sharp and deadly intellectual weapons available to the jurists of the age of the ius commune. The knowledge of those skilled argumentative techniques will be demonstrated a very valuable competence for current day jurists, leading students to the understanding and the conscious use of methods of reasoning and intellectual duel which are essential for the exercise of legal dialectic.
Prerequisites
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Course unit content
The course aims to provide a description of the methodological tools used by the jurists of the Middle and Modern Ages to construct their legal arguments. Rhetorical and dialectical techniques will be also presented, starting from the description of the conceptual tools of distinctio and syllogism, in order to illustrate their concrete application to legal reasoning. Basic techniques of medieval mnemonics aimed at the legal dispute and fundamental rules for the construction of the rhetorical discourse will be described as well. The course will also include practical exercises, to demonstrate the actual usefulness to contemporary jurists of methods and arguments adopted in the age of the ius commune.
Full programme
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Bibliography
A. Padovani: Modernità degli antichi. Breviario di argomentazione forense, Bononia University Press, Bologna 2006.
Teaching methods
The course is divided into frontal lessons conceived in the way of active learning, with oral presentation of the subjects that are the object of the teaching. Each lesson will be 60 minutes. Part of the lessons will be of a seminar character and aimed at the thematic study of individual highlights of the course.
There will also be follow-up exercises, aimed at the practical examination of quaestiones and the conduct of disputationes.
Assessment methods and criteria
The summary appraisal of the learning consists of a final oral examination consisting of an oral question to determine to what extent, on a scale from 0 to 30, the student is able to highlight the history, role, importance and use of the conceptual remarks of rhetoric, dialectics and logic for the conscious application of legal rules in the practice of law. To this end, the student must obviously demonstrate that he has studied and understood the notions of rhetoric, dialectics and logic that have been given during the frontal lesson, which are contained in the texts recommended for the preparation of the exam and that are synthesized in didactic schemes described during the lessons and offered as a support to teaching.
Other information
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2030 agenda goals for sustainable development
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