The subject of the study is the rhetorical strategies and tactics employed by lawyer-orators in judicial discourse, along with the grounds for their scientific classification within modern legal rhetoric. The author analyzes speech strategy as a complex communicative plan determined by the goals of procedural advocacy, the orator’s individual psychological traits, and the addressee’s specificity (professional judges or a lay jury). Distinctive features of judicial argumentation are examined: strict adherence to legality in evidence collection and evaluation, reliance on the hierarchy of legal norms, requirements of relevance, admissibility, and credibility of evidentiary material, and the need for transparent, logically sound argumentation under situational uncertainty of the future verdict. The methodology combines general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, generalization, classification) with specific approaches: comparative legal, descriptive-analytical, discursive, linguo-analytical, and rhetorical-stylistic. Comparative analysis of eminent trial lawyers’ oratory is applied, alongside an interdisciplinary approach bridging jurisprudence, linguistics, psychology, and argumentation theory. Scientific novelty lies in substantiating a classification based on functional criteria according to argument type (rational, emotional, value-based). Using judicial practice, the author demonstrates a three-block strategy model (semantic-argumentative, pragmatic-image, and emotional-dialogic), expanded by tactical tools: causal and temporal analysis, opponent’s position deconstruction, discrediting, compliment, dialogization, dramatization, “thinking aloud,” and appeals to moral imperatives. The analysis yields criteria for rhetorical strategy effectiveness in judicial discourse. Results are applicable to legal training, courtroom rhetoric practice, and linguistic expertise assessing communicative characteristics of speech products.
Vsevolod Sergeevich Prisada (2026) studied this question.