ABSTRACT
In everyday understanding, if something is ‘rhetorical’, it is usually associated with being empty or meaningless or just for effect. Rhetoric is often seen to sit in contradiction to real substance or meaning. This chapter discusses the way some aspects of judgment can be understood through the notion of rhetoric. It discusses who the ‘audience’ of legal judgment might be such as the parties to a case, lawyers, other judges, undergraduate students, the public, or people in the future. The chapter turns to the argumentative nature of judgment as something that seeks to persuade its audience and how rhetoric is important with respect to that aim. It discusses the constructed nature of judgment that engagement with its rhetorical forms reveals.
