Judicial Rhetoric Analysis

The study of Law and the process of Judicial Rhetoric are two concepts that have been around since the days of Aristotle. While both have transitioned with time, the core of both of them have stayed the same. Where there is law, there has to be some sort of Judicial process. This procedure is how justice is administered and Truth is upheld in a society. You can not look at one of these ideas without the other. However, 15 pages is not nearly enough space to encompass such broad topics. Therefore, this paper will focus on primarily “interrogational/ inquisitive” Rhetoric used by Lawyers in a court setting. More specifically, it will focus on S.C. Representative Trey Gowdy’s questioning of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding the Benghazi incident of 2012. Rep. Gowdy heads the Benghazi committee that was established to find out who was responsible for the 2012 attack on the American Consul in Benghazi that killed four American
What makes this case standout is that it is such a high profile investigation, where Judicial Rhetoric is in used. Since it is fairly recent event not a ton of research has been done on this topic; which is partly why I chose it. Along with the fact that I’m generally curious about rhetoric used by lawyers.

First and foremost, I want to discuss what “Law” is and how we determine what makes a law a law and for that answer I’m looking at a book called, The Concept of Law by H.L.A Hart. This book is referenced over and over in most of the articles that I’ve read pertaining to Judicial Rhetoric. Hence, why I want to focus on it for the bases of “Law”. In order to determine if in fact a law was broken there needs to be a working definition of what “Law” is. Once that is determined then we can proceed with how Gowdy questions Clinton in his quest to find the “Truth” (may or may not have a definition of truth here) The actual