Law and Rhetoric in Ancient Greece and Today

This paper examines the interaction of law and rhetoric in classical Athens and in current US common law. I argue that there is an inevitable tension between rhetoric, which operates with words (Greek ), and law, which supposedly deals with facts (Greek ) but necessarily works also with words. The Greeks understood this tension and accepted it, whereas today we often try to deny it, though recent work in the field of Law and Literature has done much to illuminate the operation of rhetoric in law today.