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Ethos and Persuasion

A successful plaintiffs' lawyer friend describes trying cases against big firm lawyers as being "taking candy from a baby."  He is right, of course.  University of Chicago law professor Todd Henderson illustrates why. Todd Henderson's Ethos. [If you're not familiar with Todd Henderson, the rest of post won't make any sense.  Here's a summary of Henderson's arguments, and here is a shorter summary from the Chicago Tribune.] Aristotle's Rhetoric - which most people don't even pretend to have read, even though it's free - could have spared Henderson some grief: Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime & Federalism on September 26, 2010 (boomark / email).