Constructing an Argument
Chapter Seven
Syllabus topic 1.2, "How to identify, evaluate, interpret and construct argument."
Pages 33 to 36 of 334
In one line
To construct an argument is to work backwards from the conclusion you must establish to the statements that would establish it, and then to check that you can support each of those.
In the wording a student can write in an examination: the construction of an argument proceeds by fixing the conclusion, identifying the premises from which it would follow, testing whether those premises can themselves be supported, and only then arranging the whole in an order a reader can follow.
Why it is done backwards
Beginners construct arguments forwards. They set down what they know, add more of it, and hope that a conclusion emerges. The result is a heap of true statements that establishes nothing, which is the commonest fault in first-year answers and in badly drafted pleadings alike.
The competent method is the reverse. Fix the conclusion first. In litigation the conclusion is given to you: it is the relief claimed, or the finding you need. Then ask the question that does all the work: what would have to be true for that conclusion to follow? The answer is your list of premises, and the list is usually short.
Doing it this way has an immediate practical benefit. It tells you what evidence you need to collect and what law you need to find, before you collect or find anything. An argument constructed forwards discovers its gaps at the end; one constructed backwards discovers them at the beginning.
The four steps
Step one: state the conclusion in one sentence. Not a topic, not an area of dispute, a proposition capable of being true or false. "The suit is barred by limitation" is a conclusion. "Limitation" is not.
Step two: find the premises that would yield it. Ask what general rule and what particular facts together produce this conclusion. In legal argument the answer almost always has the same shape: one premise of law, one or more of fact.
Step three: test each premise. For each one, ask whether it can be supported, and by what. A premise of law is supported by a statute or a decision. A premise of fact is supported by evidence. A premise that can be supported by neither has to be abandoned, and the argument rebuilt around a different route to the same conclusion.
Step four: arrange it. Set out the rule, then the facts, then the application, then the conclusion. This is the order every court expects, and it is the order in which a reader can check each step as it arrives.
The rules of good construction
State the premises you are actually relying on. An argument whose real weight rests on an unstated assumption is weak precisely because the assumption was never exposed to challenge, and it will be exposed by the other side.
Constructing an Argument
Claim no more than your premises give you. Overstating a conclusion is the commonest self-inflicted wound in advocacy. If the evidence shows the notice was posted, conclude that it was posted, not that it was received. A modest conclusion that follows is worth more than a bold one that does not.
Use each word in one sense throughout. If "possession" means physical control in your first premise, it must mean physical control in the third. This is the requirement that the fallacy of equivocation breaks.
Make every premise relevant. A premise that could be deleted without weakening the argument is not helping it; it is inviting the reader to wonder why it was included.
Anticipate the strongest objection and answer it. Not the weakest. An argument that disposes of a trivial objection and ignores the real one has drawn attention to the real one.
Do not assume what you are trying to prove. An argument whose premise is a restatement of its conclusion is circular. It is a fault that is easy to see in someone else's writing and almost invisible in one's own, which is why the standard form of the last three chapters is worth the trouble: a circular argument is obvious the moment it is written out with the premises above the line.
A worked example: building an argument from nothing
The problem. Your client, Meena, lent Rs 2,00,000 to Suresh in cash in January 2023. He has not repaid. You are asked whether a suit will succeed.
Step one, the conclusion. "Suresh is liable to repay Rs 2,00,000 to Meena." Notice how much sharper this is than "Meena has a case."
Step two, what would have to be true.
1. A person who receives money as a loan is bound to repay it.
2. Suresh received Rs 2,00,000 from Meena.
3. The money was received as a loan and not as a gift or in discharge of some other obligation.
4. The claim is within the period of limitation.
Therefore Suresh is liable to repay Rs 2,00,000 to Meena.
Step three, test each premise. Premise 1 is law and is not in doubt. Premise 2 is fact, and here the argument meets its first real difficulty: the payment was in cash, so what proves it? A bank withdrawal on the same day, a witness, a message. Premise 3 is fact, and it is the premise the defence will attack, because "it was a gift" is the standard answer to a cash loan between people who know each other. Premise 4 is law applied to fact and requires the date to be fixed.
Constructing an Argument
Step four, what the construction has produced. Not an argument yet, but something more useful: a list of exactly two things to prove and one date to check, arrived at before a single document was collected. That is the practical value of constructing backwards, and it is why the method is taught in a first-year logic paper rather than in a procedure paper.
A note on modesty. The conclusion as drafted claims liability for the whole sum. If the evidence supports only Rs 1,50,000, the argument as built fails entirely, and a conclusion drafted to the evidence would have succeeded in part. Claim what your premises give you.
Distinctions that carry marks
| Constructing forwards | Constructing backwards | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts from | What you happen to know | The conclusion you must reach |
| Produces | A heap of true statements | A list of premises to be proved |
| Gaps discovered | At the end | At the beginning |
| Typical fault | The conclusion does not follow | None inherent |
| Analysis | Construction | |
|---|---|---|
| Direction | Takes an existing argument apart | Builds a new one |
| Starting point | A passage | A conclusion |
| Skill tested | Reading | Drafting |
What this does not mean
Constructing an argument is not deciding what you want to be true and then finding support for it. The test of a constructed argument is the same as the test of anybody else's: are the premises supportable, and does the conclusion follow? An argument built backwards from a conclusion you cannot support is not an argument; it is a wish.
Anticipating an objection is not conceding it. Stating the strongest point against you and answering it is what a court expects, and it costs nothing where the answer is good.
A structured argument need not read like a list. The four steps are the skeleton. A well written paragraph has the same skeleton and does not show it.
Quick revision
Method: fix the conclusion, find the premises that would yield it, test whether each can be supported, arrange rule then facts then application then conclusion.
Backwards, not forwards. Forwards produces true statements that prove nothing.
Rules: state your real premises; claim no more than they give; one sense per word; every premise relevant; answer the strongest objection; never assume the conclusion.
Circularity is invisible in prose and obvious in standard form, which is a reason to write the standard form out.
Legal shape: one premise of law, one or more of fact. That shape tells you what evidence to collect.
Test yourself
1. Why is an argument constructed backwards from its conclusion?
Because the conclusion is what fixes which premises are needed, and asking what would have to be true for the conclusion to follow produces a short and definite list. Building forwards from what happens to be known produces a collection of true statements with no guarantee that anything follows from them, and the gaps are discovered only at the end, when the work of collecting evidence has already been done.
Constructing an Argument
2. State four rules of good construction.
State the premises actually relied on rather than leaving the load-bearing assumption unstated; claim no more in the conclusion than the premises will support; use every key word in a single sense throughout; and make sure each premise is relevant, so that none could be deleted without weakening the argument. To these may be added answering the strongest objection rather than the weakest, and never assuming what is to be proved.
3. What is the usual shape of a legal argument's premises?
One premise of law and one or more premises of fact, with the conclusion following from their combination. The legal premise is supported out of statutes and decided cases and is contested by argument; the factual premises are supported by evidence and are contested by evidence. Separating them tells a lawyer what has to be researched and what has to be proved.
4. Why does overstating a conclusion weaken an argument?
Because validity is destroyed the moment the conclusion goes beyond what the premises support, so an overstated conclusion turns a good argument into a bad one without adding anything. Where the premises establish that a notice was posted, a conclusion that it was received does not follow, and the whole argument fails, whereas the modest conclusion would have succeeded and might well have been enough.
5. What is a circular argument, and how is it detected?
An argument in which a premise is a restatement of the conclusion, so that the argument assumes what it was supposed to prove. It is difficult to see in flowing prose, where the same claim in two different forms of words reads like two claims. It is detected by writing the argument in standard form, with the premises listed above the line and the conclusion below it, where the repetition becomes obvious.
6. Your client wants a declaration that a gift deed is void. State the first step and give the conclusion in proper form.
The first step is to state the conclusion as a single proposition capable of being true or false, not as a subject of dispute. "The gift deed dated 4 April 2024 executed by X in favour of Y is void." From that sentence the necessary premises can be read off: the rule under which such a deed is void, and the facts that bring this deed within the rule.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.