ABSTRACT
To construct an effective syllogism, the advocate first creates the appropriate categories and frames the relevant questions. The beekeeper-artist syllogism also shows how categories concretely influence our logical reasoning, and how mistaken the categorical thinking sometimes is. For legal advocates, constructing the categories that form the basis of their major and minor premises is critical. The truth, as most advocates and many judges know, is that much more discretion goes into the construction and application of categories and rules than the "balls or strikes" analogy acknowledges. Category construction and selection affect the syllogistic arguments that follow, but they also, and more immediately, affect the advocate's framing of the issue or question. Changing the category description changes the framing of the question. Another option for re-framing the issue is to widen the lens. The syllogism works in part because the early premises, even if debatable, are reasonable and often easily agreed to.
