The logical structure of judicial reasoning. A Thomistic model.

This essay intends to show how the methodology of judicial reasoning, especially its articulation in a context of discovery and a context of justification, can be structured in a very similar way to the disputative dialectics of medieval scholastics, above all if the latter is rethought in the light of Thomistic partition of Aristotelian logic in via inventionis and via iudicii. It is thus possible to highlight a significant structural affinity between judicial controversy and scholastic disputation. In both cases, in fact, it is crucial, on the one hand, the identification of the solution on the basis of the principles common to the parties involved (context of discovery/via inventionis), on the other, the evaluation and refutation of the opposite arguments (context of justification/via iudicii).