Discurso judicial: um discurso sofista?

Abstract

Based on the realization that the way lawyers are usually depicted makes them fall into the contemporary definition of sophist, this paper seeks to verify whether the lawyer's judicial speech is in fact a sophist discourse. In order to achieve this objective, this paper has been divided into two parts. In the first part, three meanings of sophist are presented: 1) etymological; 2) re-signification given by Plato and the further study given by Aristotle; 3) contemporary. The hope was to be able to understand the contemporary meaning of sophist from a more privileged perspective, in which we can understand which elements of some past meanings have been maintained and/or left behind. In the second part, based on the concept of judicial speech given by Aristotle and the contemporary meaning of sophist, an analysis is made to verify whether judicial speech is a sophist discourse. The conclusion is that judicial speech is not conceptually sophist.