Logic and rationality in the judicial reconstruction of the facts

Abstract

What exactly means the logic of factual judgment? And rational conception of the evidence? The essay proposes to answer these questions, and identifies as proper to the factual judgement, essentially, except for particular cases, neither demonstrative nor deductive logic, but rather the logic that can be defined empirical, inductive, abductive, argumentative, dialectical-rhetorical and opinative, whose specific characteristics are clarified. While probative reasoning can be said to be rational when it is linguistically correct, complete, representative, reliable, plausible, coherent and congruous, in the terms also specifically clarified in this essay.