Editor's note

• Author: YANG Bei
• Pages: 445-445

FRONTIERS OF LAW IN CHINA

VOL. 11 SEPTEMBER 2016 NO. 3

DOI 10.3868/s050-005-016-0025-0

FOCUS TWO

ROLE OF RHETORIC IN RULE OF LAW

EDITOR’S NOTE

YAN G Bei *

It is a pity that rhetoric, which “used to be and would be queen of humanities,” has

been misunderstood by many for a long time. These misunderstandings prevent people

from realizing rhetoric’s role in rule of law. In recent years, although rhetoric has

attracted more and more attention in academia, there are still a lot of basic issues needing

to be clarified. For this reason, the editor invited three scholars to make their contribution

to clarification.

Prof. Guy Haarscher, a prominent scholar in the contemporary study of rhetoric, who

was secretary of Perelman Funds, wrote the first article. He tries to inform people about

the pursuit of rhetoric. Just as the other two authors pointed out, rhetoric is not a tool,

which could be manipulated by people arbitrarily, but rather a comprehensive philosophy.

Prof. Adeodato, a very influential scholar in Brazil, who has encouraged a lot of young

Brazilian scholars to study rhetoric, submitted the second article. Prof. Adeodato provided

three theses for a rhetorical philosophy of law, and inspires people to gain a deeper

understanding of rhetoric as philosophy. Associate Prof. Yang Bei, a young Chinese

scholar, who has concentrated on rhetoric for more than ten years, wrote the last article.

In this article, the author tries to bring us a new understanding of democracy and rule of

law, and points out the possible role of rhetoric in contemporary society.

All of their efforts aim to draw a relative, clear picture of rhetoric. Their standpoints

might diverge in the details, but their common view seems more obvious. All of them

believe that rhetoric aims to achieve a reasonable legal decision, and being reasonable

never means being relative or subjective. In fact, there are more common senses in these

articles.

* (󰐽󲧲) Ph.D in Law and Associate Professor, School of Law, University of International Business and

Economics, Beijing 100029, China. Contact: yangbei_1@126.com