University of California, Berkeley
Not quite what one would expect, the professor of this course
emphasizes repeatedly in the course listing that this class is "NOT
a course about law or "legal reasoning." It is instead an
exploration of logical fallacies that are often presented by
defendants and plaintiffs on court television shows like Judge Judy
and The People’s Court. Seems right up the alley of most
college students, as they are squarely in the demographic of
afternoon television programming (which also targets the elderly
and unemployed).
Per UC Berkeley, the course description is
...
TV "Judge" shows have become extremely popular in the last 3-5
years. A fascinating aspect of these shows from a rhetorical point
of view is the number of arguments made by the litigants that are
utterly illogical, or perversions of standard logic, and yet are
used over and over again. For example, when asked "Did you hit the
plaintiff?" respondents often say, "If I woulda hit him, he'd be
dead!" This reply avoids answering "yes" or "no" by presenting a
perverted form of the logical strategy called "a fortiori" argument
["from the stronger"] in Latin. The seminar will be concerned with
identifying such apparently popular logical fallacies on "Judge
Judy" and "The People's Court" and discussing why such strategies
are so widespread. It is NOT a course about law or "legal
reasoning." Students who are interested in logic, argument, TV, and
American popular culture will probably be interested in this
course. I emphasize that it is NOT about the application of law or
the operations of the court system in general.
Required Books:
- David Hackett Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a
Logic of Historical Thought, Harper Perennial (1970)
This cache is part of a series of winter
hides dedicated to 15 of the strangest college courses in
America.