Criteria for Evaluating Constitutional Judicial Argumentation

One of the key directions in the development of the theory of constitutional judicial argumentation is the development of tools that can help to assess the quality of constitutional judicial argumentation and its effectiveness. Since argumentation serves a functional role in relation to the activities it supports, it is crucial to consider the purpose and features of constitutional norm control in this process. The paper examines the factors that necessitate the identification of specific criteria for evaluating constitutional judicial argumentation. Using the premise that argumentation should strengthen constitutional normativity, the author formulates methodological requirements for the process of forming constitutional discourse and identifies the following criteria for evaluating constitutional judicial argumentation: constitutional justification of assertions regarding the constitutionally appropriate; accuracy in diagnosing the current legal regulation; adequacy in describing and understanding the social context; acceptability of arguments for constitutional discourse; and completeness (exhaustiveness) of the argumentation. The study demonstrates that evaluation criteria for argumentation that take into account the specifics of constitutional norm control significantly reduce the risk of argumentative errors, as well as allowfor the identification of manipulations and incorrect argumentation, giving an opportunity to respond to them. This is particularly important given that in constitutional discourse, each thesis and the arguments presented in its support influence the definition of the boundaries of what is constitutionally appropriate, permissible, and prohibited.