This dissertation is devoted to the comprehensive research of judicial argumentation and, in particular, to its periods of development and general theoretical foundations, its peculiarities, as well as trial participants’ judicial argumentation specifics. The paper also examines the peculiarities of judicial argumentation in Civil Law and Common Law and makes particular focus on the study of European Court of Human Rights case law, judicial decisions rendered by The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, and judicial practice in Ukraine. Section 1 applies the historical method to establish the developmental periods of judicial argumentation, namely: ancient, medieval, modern, and current. The method of comparative analysis has supported the distinguishing of judicial argumentation place in the system of legal argumentation. A distinction between theoretical approaches that influence the development of judicial argumentation, namely logic, rhetoric, dialogic, legal realism, sociologic, dialectics, pragma-dialectics, hermeneutic, coherent is made via the methodology of comparison and formal logic. Section 2 applies formal-dogmatic and empirical methods to highlight the peculiarities of judicial argumentation and the peculiarities of participants’ argumentation in trial. The features of judicial argumentation in Civil law and Common law are revealed through comparative analysis. The chapter also provides an analysis of the Federal Сonstitutional Сourt of Germany judgments and European Court of Human Rights judgments, specifically focusing on their argumentation. Section 3 explores argumentation in decisions of Ukrainian courts and highlights its features, and their application in the country’s judicial practice. The chapter specifies features of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine and courts of general jurisdiction approaches. The practical significance of the results obtained lies in their utility for: deepening academic knowledge about the peculiarities of judicial argumentation by creating the necessary theoretical basis for improvement of the educational process within the courses and special courses in general theory of law, including special courses on the theory of legal argumentation, in the writing of textbooks and manuals, and in the improvement of legislation on legal education; the practice of law in optimizing the arguments of participants in the legal proceedings. The results of the study can also be applied to effectively implement judicial reform in Ukraine.
Keywords: argumentation, rhetoric, court, legal argumentation, judicial argumentation, the European Court of Human Rights, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, court of general jurisdiction, Constitutional Court of Ukraine.
