Argumentation in legal communication

Legal argumentation combines a general structure of justification with communicative and institutional features specific to different forms of legal practice. The article examines how this general argumentative structure is modified by the conditions of legal communication. Legal argumentation is analysed in terms of three interrelated dimensions: logical, communicative, and legal-procedural. The logical dimension comprises a standpoint or thesis, reasons advanced in its support or against it, and the justificatory relation between them. The communicative dimension concerns the participants in argumentation, their roles, addressees, and the functions performed by argumentative acts. The legal-procedural dimension determines the institutional conditions under which arguments are advanced, evaluated, and acquire legal significance. This framework is applied comparatively to legislative argumentation, constitutional and administrative adjudication, and adversarial proceedings. The analysis shows that these forms share a relatively stable argumentative core while differing in institutional roles, audiences, admissible reasons, argumentative purposes, procedural constraints, and decision-making authority. Different forms of legal argumentation are therefore best understood as institutional modifications of a common argumentative structure. This approach makes it possible to account for both the unity and variability of legal argumentation without reducing it to formal logical inference, rhetorical persuasion, or procedural regulation.