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Forensic   Listen
noun
Forensic  n.  (Amer. Colleges) An exercise in debate; a forensic contest; an argumentative thesis.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Forensic" Quotes from Famous Books



... already narrated, how at Oxford I was embarrassed as to the forensic propriety of transferring punishment at all. This however I received as matter of authority, and rested much on the wonderful exhibition made of the evil of sin, when such a being could be subjected ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... appeared a little group of men who proposed that Christianity should be conceived and practised as a way of living—nothing more nor less. They rejected theological language and terminology root and branch. They are as innocent of scholastic subtlety and forensic conceptions as though they had been born in this generation. They seem to have wiped their slate clean of the long line of Augustinian contributions, and to have begun afresh with the life and message of Jesus ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... the Serjeant's mention of the written placard hung up in the parlour window of Goswell Street, bearing this inscription, "Apartments furnished for single gentlemen: inquire within," the sustained seriousness with which he added, that there the forensic orator paused while several gentlemen of the jury "took a note of the document," one of that intelligent body inquiring, "There is no date to that, is there, sir?" made fresh ripples of laughter spread from it as inevitably as the concentric circles on ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... have acquired their full effect. Jostling against clerks going to post the day's letters, and against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against plaintiffs and defendants and suitors of all sorts, and against the general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has interposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest business of life; diving through law and equity, and through that kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what and ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... in a formal claim to be crowned with the King, and Mr. Brougham urged it, with all his forensic eloquence and skill, before the Privy Council; but, as will be seen, all the principal precedents were in ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... certain shares bought by him had been bought on behalf of his ward, would save him; so said the attorney: to which, however, Alaric answered not much. Could any acutest lawyer, let him be made of never so fine an assortment of forensic indignation, now whitewash his name and set him again right before the world? He, of course, communicated with Sir Gregory, and agreed to be suspended from his commissionership till the trial should be over. His two colleagues ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... eye-winker was left to her. She resembled nothing so much as one of the sluglike little Mexican hairless dogs we had seen on the Isthmus. The brands now showed plainly enough, but were as complicated as ever in appearance. Thunders of mock forensic oratory shook the air. I remember defence acknowledged that in that multiplicity of lines the figure of Chino's brand could be traced; but pointed to the stars of the heavens and the figures of their ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... succeeded by the return of Pompey from the East, and the establishment of the First Triumvirate; which, disappointing his hopes of political power, induced him to resume his forensic and literary occupations. From these he was recalled, after an interval of four years, by the threatening measures of Clodius, who at length succeeded in driving him into exile. This event, which, considering the circumstances connected with it, was one of the most ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... little differing from that of an Old Bailey attorney of the worst class. And this result is the less liable to modification from personal qualities, inasmuch as there is no great theatre (as with us) for individual display. Forensic eloquence is unknown in Germany, as it is too generally on the continent, from the defect of all popular or open judicatures. A similar defect of deliberative assemblies—such, at least, as represent any popular influences and debate with open doors—intercepts ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... that 'plead' is a forensic term. There is a great lawsuit in which God is plaintiff and men defendants. The word ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... was doomed to everlasting infamy by Gifford, in his satire of the Baviad and Maeviad, in judgments afterwards confirmed in a celebrated trial for libel in which the famous Erskine delivered one of his best forensic speeches. Williams was the associate in London of a small but ambitious set of mutual admirers in literature, of whom Mr. Merry and his future wife were the "Della Crusca" and "Rosa Matilda," and all three of these worthies ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... membership in the Adelphian Society which met every Monday evening. My activities there, I find, made up a large part of my life during this second winter. I not only debated furiously, disputing weighty political questions, thus advancing the forensic side of my education, but later in the winter I helped to organize a dramatic company which gave a play for the ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... victim of its derision is somewhat pitiable. But poor Kenealy! he stood there lost, astounded, vacant, a quite tragic figure, and when the crowded House had ceased to laugh out of pure exhaustion, he spoke again in a tone completely changed; all the forensic manner gone out of him. That he could find a voice at all after such a scathing was an evidence of his courage, but with that unfortunate sentence he had shot his bolt. He never attempted to address the House ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... sparkles and pierces and almost assures victory, while it 'speaks audience ere the tongue.'" Yet, as is so often the case, the unequalled advocate found himself in the House of Commons less conspicuously successful than he had been at the Bar. The forensic manner of speech, in which he was a head and shoulders higher than any of his legal contemporaries, is, after ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... With regard to forensic eloquence, the quality of the audience determined the form of speech. In case of need it was enriched with all sorts ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... desolate widow with nine children, of which the eldest is under eight years of age; but if ever I have to listen to him again, I should like to see him as a young lady of good connexions who has been seduced by an officer of the Guards." In the days of his forensic triumphs Henry Brougham was remarkable for the mimetic power which enabled him to describe friend or foe by a few subtle turns of the voice. At a later period, long after he had left the bar, in compliance with a request ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... to the law. He seems almost to have thought in legal phrases, the commonest of legal expressions were ever at the end of his pen in description or illustration. That he should have descanted in lawyer language when he had a forensic subject in hand, such as Shylock's bond, was to be expected, but the knowledge of law in 'Shakespeare' was exhibited in a far different manner: it protruded itself on all occasions, appropriate or inappropriate, and mingled itself with strains ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain

... doctrine of the high antiquity of man. His book is not merely a debating-club discussion of the pros and cons, the probabilities for and against the doctrine, but rather the earnest pleading of the advocate fully persuaded that the truth is on his side. Not that it displays any forensic heat;—it is calm, cautious, dispassionate; but it has the air of one governed by conviction, and he often assumes the entire truth of his conclusions with the quiet nonchalance of a man seemingly unconscious that what he regards as matters of established certainty will be viewed ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... hesitated not because she was any longer in doubt as to whether she would speak the whole truth or not—she had committed herself already too far—but because the form of the question nettled her. It was a little too forensic for her taste. She was anxious to know the man; she could dispense ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... washerwoman has become Lord Chancellor or Archbishop of Canterbury we do, theoretically and abstractedly, feel a higher reverence for such self-made magnate than for one who has been as it were born into forensic or ecclesiastical purple. But not the less must the offspring of the washerwoman have had very much trouble on the subject of his birth, unless he has been, when young as well as when old, a very great man indeed. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... love-letters with the epithets of endearment, nor those mystic crosses and ciphers which, he had been credibly informed, chastely hid the exchange of those mutual caresses known as "kisses." There was no cruel tearing of the veil from those sacred privacies of the human affection; there was no forensic shouting out of those fond confidences meant only for ONE. But there was, he was shocked to say, a new sacrilegious intrusion. The weak pipings of Cupid were mingled with the chorus of the saints,—the ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... merely forensic sense, it was indeed a battle of giants. In the whole field of American politics no man has equaled Douglas in the expedients and strategy of debate. Lacking originality and constructive logic, he had great facility in appropriating by ingenious ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... lunch with him, saying that I had one or two matters to discuss. Even in my obstinacy and excitement I remained shrewd enough to see the advantage of being furnished with well-sounding reasons for the step that I was about to take. Wetter's forensic sharpness, ready wit, and persuasive eloquence would dress my case in better colours than I could contrive for myself. It mattered little to me how well he knew that arguments were needed, not to convince myself, but to flourish in the faces ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... steady pressure of a rising gale, so that human mass surged and broke in waves of audible emotion, when Beryl's voice ceased; for the grace and beauty of a sorrowing woman hold a spell more potent than volumes of forensic eloquence, of juridic casuistry, of rhetorical pyrotechnics, and at its touch, the latent floods of pity gushed; people sprang to their feet, and somewhere in the wide auditory a woman sobbed. Habitues of a celebrated Salon des Etrangers recall the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... freed of his self-consciousness by anger or enthusiasm. Neither of them, in any single speech, could be compared to Webster in the other of the two most famous American debates, but the series was a remarkable exhibition of forensic power. The interest grew as the struggle lengthened. People traveled great distances to hear them. At every meeting-place, a multitude of farmers and dwellers in country towns, with here and there a sprinkling of city-folk, crowded about the stand where "Old Abe" ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... the Osiandristic and the Stancarian Controversy, from 1549 to 1566, in which Andrew Osiander denied the forensic character of justification, and taught that Christ is our righteousness only according to His divine nature, while Stancarus contended that Christ is our righteousness according to His human nature only. Both, Osiander as well as Stancarus, were opposed by Melanchthon, Flacius, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... forensic oratory, began his address by contending that duelling was not prohibited by the law of France. In support he quoted Guizot's dictum: "Where the barbarian murders, the Frenchman seeks honourable combat; legislation on the subject is profitless; and this ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... is the inducement held out to the agriculturalist to cultivate cotton in the shape of bounties almost amounting to the value of the staple. The towns have also been benefited by the establishment of municipalities which have removed many long standing nuisances. The old forensic injustice, and judicial burlesques, have been annihilated by the appointment of district police magistrates; and, in fact, the whole country and people ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... knowledge of English criminal law which, considering how little he had practised it, may fairly be called extraordinary. [Macaulay's practice at the bar had been less than little, according to an account which he gave of it at a public dinner: "My own forensic experience, gentlemen, has been extremely small; for my only recollection of an achievement that way is that at quarter sessions I once convicted a boy of stealing a parcel of cocks and hens."] He must have possessed the gift of going ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... whom more or less achieved distinction in the service of their country; but his second son and namesake peculiarly inherited his father’s legal talents, and became his successor in the office of Procureur-général. He more than rivalled his father’s forensic success; and many traditions survive of his great eloquence, and of the pre-eminent ability with which he pleaded on behalf of the University of Paris for the expulsion of the Jesuits from France, under suspicion ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... selected, duly edited to make them sound the worst, and printed in black-faced pica. Other passages in the speech were in italics. The whole plant of the newspaper had been utilized to give adequate expression to this unparalleled forensic outburst. A much garbled report "in full" was given of the wording, and as lurid yellow as was ever mixed went to make up the account of the incidents in Yimville. According to the report the mob numbered thousands and strong men of both parties wept and gnashed ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... judges had been impeached in half a century, in America, "boasting of its superior purity and virtue," seven judges had been prosecuted within two years. More loosely wrought, but not less effective was Martin's address, the superb climax of a remarkable forensic career! The accusation against Chase he reduced to a charge of indecorum, and he was ready to admit that the manner of his friend "bore a stronger resemblance to that of Lord Thurlow than of Lord Chesterfield," but, said he, our judges ought not to be "like the gods of Epicurus ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... indirect ways because, although it was unlikely that any one would know him, he shrank from the prospect of demanding eyes. At nine o'clock even he was no farther than the old circus ground, and, nearing it, he heard, through the evening stillness, a voice, loud, sharp, forensic. It was hauntingly familiar to him, a voice he might not know at the moment, yet one that had at least belonged to some part of his Addington life. The response it brought from him, in assaulted nerves and repugnant ears, was entirely distasteful. Whatever the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... a former place of unhappy memory to our hero) esteemed in private life the most honourable, the most moral, even the most austere of men; and his grave and stern repute on this score, joined to the dazzle of his eloquence and forensic powers, had baffled in great measure the rancour of party hostility, and obtained for him a character for virtues almost as high and as enviable as that which he ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the house of commons; his career was chequered by vanities and weaknesses from which that of Follett was free; and yet even if he had not been associated with the greatest constitutional questions of his time and their triumphant solution, his fame would live by the mere force and beauty of his forensic eloquence as long as our language. But no collection of the speeches of Follett has been made; none will ever be attempted; no speech he delivered is read, except perchance as part of an interesting trial, and essential to its story, and then the language is felt to be poor, the cadences ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... nothing short of the case of Prince Michael would have brought him on such a journey in the middle of the night. But the case of Prince Michael, as it happened, was complicated by legalism as well as lawlessness. On the last occasion he had escaped by a forensic quibble and not, as usual, by a private escapade; and it was a question whether at the moment he was amenable to the law or not. It might be necessary to stretch a point, but a man like Sir Walter could probably stretch it ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... no avail in defense of one who was not. The cry of insanity, like that of "wolf," had been so repeatedly raised when there was no insanity, that it was not heeded when there was. Notwithstanding an argument which for legal learning and forensic eloquence attracted the attention of the press and bar, and established the counsel's reputation, the poor, insane idiot was convicted of murder in the first degree. Hayes at once obtained a writ of error, ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... Theses. At the close of the Disputation, the President usually added some remarks in Latin. After these exercises the President conferred the degrees. This, I think, may be considered as the summary of the public performances on a Commencement Day. I do not recollect any Forensic Disputation, or a Poem or Oration spoken in English, whilst I was in College."—Peirce's Hist. Harv. Univ., ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... quantity of talk, called by courtesy legislative wisdom, of which the result is 'an incoherent and undigested mass of law, shot down, as from a rubbish-cart, on the heads of the people ';{1} lawyers barking at each other in that peculiar style of dylactic delivery which is called forensic eloquence, and of which the first and most distinguished practitioner was Cerberus;{2} bear-garden meetings of mismanaged companies, in which directors and shareholders abuse each other in choice terms, not all ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... he was very near-sighted. His hair was thin and weak, which was partly attributable to his having never devoted much time to its arrangement, and partly to his having worn for five-and-twenty years the forensic wig which hung on a block beside him. The marks of hairpowder on his coat-collar, and the ill-washed and worse tied white neckerchief round his throat, showed that he had not found leisure since he left the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... Christ's death, I believe in justification by faith, I believe in sanctification by the Holy Spirit,'—true as these doctrines are; still less do they bid the child say, 'I believe in predestination, and election, and effectual calling, and irresistible grace, and vicarious satisfaction, and forensic justification, and vital faith, and ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley

... but little to originality in material. Its aim is to offer the old in a form that shall meet the needs of young students who are beginning work in debate. The effort has been made only to present the elements of forensic work so freed from technicality that they may be apparent to the student with the greatest possible economy of time and the least possible interpretation by ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon

... the books themselves. This "Vacation Voyage" has not a dull page in it. Every reader reads it to the end. Every paragraph has its own charm; every word is chosen with that quick instinct that seizes upon the right word to describe the matter in hand which characterizes Mr. Dana's forensic efforts, and places him so high on the list of natural-born advocates,—which gives him the power of eloquence at the bar, and a power scarcely less with the slower medium of the pen. These Cuban sketches are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... began to make a practical application of his legal knowledge. He bought an old form-book and began to draw up contracts, deeds, leases, mortgages, and all sorts of legal instruments for his neighbors. He also began to exercise his forensic ability in trying small cases before justices of the peace and juries, and soon acquired a local reputation as a speaker, which gave him considerable practice. But he was able in this way to earn ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... to another topic more immediately connected with the duties of active professional life, that the cultivation of a taste for polite literature has other importance besides its value as a preparation and qualification for practice and forensic contests. Nothing is so well adapted to fill up the interstices of business with rational enjoyment, to make even a solitary life agreeable, and to smooth pleasantly and honorably the downward path of age. The mental vigor of one who is fond of reading, other things ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood

... dreary dinner that day. The judges always entertain the first day of circuit, and it is considered matter of etiquette that the counsel should attend. Sometimes these forensic feeds are pleasant enough; but on the present occasion there was a visible damp thrown over the spirits of the party. His lordship was evidently savage at the unforeseen escape of M'Wilkin, and looked upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... absurdities, a Mahometan slave was allowed to be sworn as a witness against me; whereupon I burst forth with a torrent of argument, defence, abuse, and scorn, till a couple of soldiers were called to keep my limbs and tongue in forensic order. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... oratory is still too wide for a pointed illustration: and, so, I propose farther to confine my references to the department of Political Oratory; coupling with that, however, the Forensic branch—which has much in common with the other, and has given birth to some of our most splendid examples of the ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... the polls, he turned to the law as another channel, supplementing forensic failings by his artful story-telling. Judges would suspend business till "that Lincoln fellow got through with his yarn-spinning" or underhandedly would direct the usher to get the rich bit Lincoln told, and repeat it ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... he more than once wrote an article with the full intention of standing the trial which he knew would be sure to follow its publication. One of his reasons may have been that this was the only way in which he could indulge his penchant for forensic disputation. He had been bred a clergyman, but, disliking the retirement of a quiet country parsonage, he threw up his preferment, abandoned his clerical functions altogether, and came to London to keep his terms at the Temple. The benchers, however, holding ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... fact, and call on God, as a witness of their innocence, He, out of his goodness and mercy, has confounded them, and proved their guilt, to the satisfaction of the court and jury." After a further display of forensic eloquence, the judge sentenced them "to be hanged by the neck 'till dead," on Friday, the 12th of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... crowds of interested spectators, and the matters of litigation were widely discussed in the taverns and homes of the village. Cooperstown, as the county seat, was the chief battle ground of an endless warfare among the lawyers of the region, and the forensic struggles of the first twenty years of the century developed an array of legal talent in Otsego county which gained the reputation of being the ablest in the State west of the Hudson. In those days the best lawyers were orators, and some were actors who ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... notice of this inquiry, albeit delivered in an imposing and forensic manner, Lavinia reminded her sister, 'After all, you know, Bella, you haven't told us how your ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... My small services, you remember, were of no use, really no use at all—quite ashamed to send in my little account. Managed the case themselves, like two patriotic parties as they were, with a degree of forensic acuteness, inspired by the consciousness of a noble cause—Ahem! You remember, friend M.? Grand triumphs ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... were summoned suddenly back to Rome for business, forensic or political, he would hasten first to Formiae and sleep there, and thence hurry, by the via Appia and the route so well known to us from Horace's journey to Brundisium, to another house in the little sea-coast town of Antium. This ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... grandson of Jonathan Edwards. Like Hamilton, he had gained great distinction in the war, and was one of the rising young men of the country. He was superior to Hamilton in personal popularity and bewitching conversation; his equal in grace of manner, in forensic eloquence and legal reputation, but his inferior in comprehensive intellect and force of character. Hamilton dwelt in the region of great ideas and principles; Burr loved to resort to legal technicalities, sophistries, and the dexterous ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... however, hinder many people from seeing the working of the law of cause and effect in this presentment. One is the question, How can moral guilt be transferred from one person to another? What is called the "forensic" argument (i.e., the court of law argument) that Christ undertook to suffer in our stead as our surety is undoubtedly open to this objection. Suretyship must by its very nature be confined to civil ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward

... of the Press Club, a forensic voice, followed by laughter, bore to them the intelligence that Mr. Flummers was in the front room, declaiming his recent adventures. They found the orator measuredly stepping the short distance between this round ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read

... is by common consent one of the greatest public speakers in America. He has a voice of unusual power and compass, and his delivery is natural and deliberate. His style is generally forensic, altho he frequently rises to the dramatic. He has been a diligent student ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser

... philosophy. It was impossible that they should not select from the questions indicated by the Christian records those which had some affinity with the order of speculations to which they were accustomed, and that their manner of dealing with them should not borrow something from their forensic habits. Almost every one who has knowledge enough of Roman law to appreciate the Roman penal system, the Roman theory of the obligations established by contract or delict, the Roman view of debts, etc., the Roman notion ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... country, leaving his refuge of his own free will to face the justice which his past life should have taught him to dread, and herein would be one of those rare and curious cases which ought to interest even a magistrate hardened with all the surroundings of forensic strife. Was it impudent folly on the part of the doomed man of Tijuco, who was tired of his life, or was it the impulse of a conscience which would at all risks have wrong set right? The problem was a strange one, it ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... the authority of Stallbaum, I should have translated dikanika "forensic;" that is, such arguments as an advocate would use in a court ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato

... doubtful, he might have impressed the jury to some slight degree. He could not, however, control the malice he felt, and he was smarting from Crozier's retorts. He had a vanity easily lacerated, and he was now too savage to abate the ferocity of his forensic attack. He sat down, however, with a sure sense of failure. Every orator knows when he is beating the air, even when his audience is quiet and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... everybody knew that." I may be told, of course, that FIGTREE appears in all the big cases—that his management of them is extraordinarily successful; that the Judges defer to him; that his speech in the Camberwell poisoning case lasted a day and a half, and is acknowledged to be a masterpiece of forensic eloquence, fit to rank with the best efforts of ERSKINE; that his fees always exceed ten thousand pounds a year and that his book on Fines and Recoveries is a monument of industry. All this I shall hear from some member of the outside public, who ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various

... are not understood. The group that our present work concerns itself with is comparatively little known, although cases belonging to it, when met, attract much attention. It is to all who should be acquainted with these striking mental and moral vagaries, particularly in their forensic and psychological significances, that our essay is addressed. In some cases vital for the administration of justice, an understanding of the types of personality and of behavior here under discussion ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... de Soubise [left his Conquest of Frankfurt for this greater Enterprise], and Milord Thomont [Irish Jacobite, whom I don't know]. As sequel to this Detail, there is a lengthy Song on the DISEMBARKMENT IN ENGLAND, and the fear the English must have of it!" Calculated to astonish the practical forensic mind. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... unsought, accidental, ingenuous details which ingratiate themselves in spite, or perhaps because of their insignificance, he is not to be compared with Grillparzer; nor, in the capacity to create a poetic atmosphere, with Otto Ludwig. His language is rugged and masculine; his style, frequently forensic. Taken as a whole, his work furnishes more abundant food for thought than objects of naive esthetic enjoyment; but, like Grillparzer's, his plays were written for the stage; and proper enactment has seldom failed to produce with them ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... of Catholics and Protestants alike as "iustitia Christi extra nos." It is found in the Apologia written in defence of the Augsburg Confession(905) and recurs in the Formula of Concord.(906) According to the "orthodox" Lutheran view, therefore, justification on its positive side is a purely forensic and outward imputation of the righteousness of Christ, which the sinner seizes with the arm of faith and puts on like a cloak to hide the wounds of ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... the identity of the abortionist come to light. There is reason to believe that in many such cases the assistance of the doctor is given knowingly and in collaboration with the abortionist contrary to the rule laid down in Sydney Smith's 'Forensic Medicine,' 3rd edition, page 362, that 'It is no part of a doctor's duty to act as a detective, but it is equally certain that it is no part of his duty to act as a screen for ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan

... Cicero was primarily the great forensic and political orator of his time, and the fifty-eight speeches which have come down to us bear testimony to the skill, wit, eloquence, and Passion which gave him his pre-eminence. But these speeches of necessity deal with the ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... speech is one of the happiest parodies in the language. Never was the forensic jargon and treatment so humorously set forth—and this because of the perfect sincerity and earnestness with which it was done. There is none of the far-fetched, impossible exaggeration—the form of burlesque which Theodore Hook or Albert Smith might have attempted. ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald

... the Amistad negroes. At the age of seventy-four, he appeared in the Supreme Court of the United States to advocate their cause. He entered upon this labor with the enthusiasm of a youthful barrister, and displayed forensic talents, a critical knowledge of law, and of the inalienable rights of man, which would have added to the renown of the most eminent jurists ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... the training programs should be expanded and should include the development of forensic investigation training and facilities that could apply scientific and technical investigative methods to counterterrorism as well as ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace

... one redeeming trait in the affair, except Harvey's previous good character; and good character, by the law of England, goes for nothing in opposition to facts proved to the satisfaction of a jury. It was likewise most unfortunate that A —— was to be the presiding judge. This man possessed great forensic acquirements, and was of spotless private character; but, like the majority of lawyers of that day—when it was no extraordinary thing to hang twenty men in a morning at Newgate—he was a staunch stickler for the gallows as the only effectual reformer and safeguard ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... sure to be copped for shoplifting, pocket-picking, lack of lawful visible, or for having in his possession property reasonably supposed to have been stolen. Therefore, honest as he was, he had been, like Paul, in prisons frequent. But, thanks to his forensic training, these interviews with the majesty of the law seemed homely and grateful to him. He could converse with a Bench in such terms of respectful camaraderie, yet with such suggestiveness of an Old Guard in reserve, that his innocence became a supererogatory merit. Besides ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... in forensic dispute when engaged in a real-estate transaction, though, if necessary, he could make kindling of the strongest rail that ever graced the front ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass

... Tom May was one of them, of course; rarely a pretty face escaped the tribute of at least one proposal from Tom May. Then there was Roderick Taunton, he with the leonine mane, who spared her none of his forensic eloquence, but found Patricia less tractable than the most stubborn of juries. Bluff Walter Thurman, too, who was said to know more of Dickens, whist and criminal law than any other man living, came to ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... inside—as I trust you will— We shall worm out the Truth with forensic skill; And if you decline—as I hope you won't— We shall know there are reasons, friend, why you don't. So the Truth must benefit any way, My beloved BILL. What is that you say? You don't care a cuss for the Truth? Oh, fie! Truth makes one a free man. Step in and try! The triumph of Truth ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various

... have gone so far in his expression of opinion on any less solid ground than moral certainty. Unprepared as he was for the large pill he had to swallow, he got it down. "And now," said Mr. Stryver, shaking his forensic forefinger at the Temple in general, when it was down, "my way out of this, is, to put you all in ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... executive capacity and marked forensic versatility of William Henry Seward whilst Governor and Senator of the Empire State, the great public have long been familiar. That public are now for the first time practically discussing his diplomatic statesmanship. A world of spectators or auditors witness ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... man is not half the age of the ripe politicians and judges and lawyers and wealthy organisers who trip him up legally, accuse him of bad faith, mark his every inconsistency. It isn't becoming so to use our forensic advantages. It isn't—if that has no ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... origin of this term dates from the venerable custom of calling students to the bar that divided the benchers' dais from the body of the hall to bear their part in the "meetings" or discussions on knotty legal topics. We are informed by Lord Campbell that Sir Edward Coke "first evinced his forensic powers when deputed by the students to make a representation to the benchers of the Inner Temple at one of the 'moots' respecting the poor quality of the commons served in the hall. He argued with so much quickness of penetration and solidity of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... rear. That, of course, was part of the Bolshevist plan of campaign. So Kerensky, wearied by his tremendous efforts to perform the task assigned him by the workers, answered Lenine. His reply was a forensic masterpiece. He took the message of the commander-in-chief of the German eastern front and hurled it at Lenine's head, figuratively speaking, showing how Lenine's reasoning was paralleled in the German propaganda. With merciless logic and incisive phrase he showed how the Bolsheviki ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... and playtimes it would take too long to tell: of her Forensic Burnings, held when the last junior forensic for the year is due; of her processional serenades, with Chinese lanterns; of her singing on the chapel steps in the evenings of May and June. These well-beloved customs have been establishing themselves year by ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... within the bar; plead; call to the bar, be called to the bar, be called within the bar; take silk; take to the law. give legal counsel, provide legal counsel. Adj. learned in the law; at the bar; forensic; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... a forensic manner] Sheriff: the Elder, though known to you and to all here as no brother of mine and the rottenest liar in this town, is speaking the truth for the first time in his life as far as what he says ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw

... iniquity of us all.' If by faith we unite ourselves with Him, there ensues a wondrous transference of characteristics, so that our sin becomes His, and His righteousness becomes ours; and that in no mere artificial or forensic sense, but in inmost reality. Theologians talk of a communicatio idiomatum as between the human and the divine elements in Christ. There is an analogous passage of the attributes of either to the other, in the relation of the believer ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... as a lawyer in New York, and has fully sustained his early reputation here. He is most remarkable for an admirably fair and clear way of stating and arguing to the court and jury, the questions both of law and fact. This contributed greatly to his success, not only as a forensic advocate, but as a political orator, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... It is through that officer that your movements have been traced. [The Grand Duchess is suddenly enlightened, and seems amused. Strammfest continues an a forensic manner.] He joined you at the Golden Anchor in Hakonsburg. You gave us the slip there; but the officer was traced to Potterdam, where you rejoined him and went alone to Premsylople. What have you done with that unhappy young ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw

... of liberty. Those on the other side generally concealed their names; but their arguments were not suffered to rest long without an answer. The controversy began about the year 1766, and was renewed at various times till 1773, when it was warmly agitated, and became a subject of forensic disputation at the public commencement at Harvard ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole

... expulsion of the younger Dionysius, he returned to Athens, and, finding it impossible to profess philosophy publicly owing to the contempt of Plato and Aristoue, was Compelled to teach privately. He wrote also forensic speeches; Phrynichus, in Photius, ranks him amongst the best orators, and mentions his orations as the standard of the pure Attic style. Hermogenes also spoke highly of him (Peri ideon.) He wrote several philosophical dialogues: (1) Concerning virtue, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... deep earnestness, in untiring energy. He is independent without self-assertion, courageous without bravado, conscientious without Pharisaism. In intellectual power, amply developed and thoroughly trained, in force as a debater, both forensic and Parliamentary, Mr. Hoar is entitled to high rank. And his rank will steadily increase, for his mind is of that type which broadens and strengthens by conflict in the arena ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... your Honor will realize that in the heat and excitement of a trial, in the turmoil of the legal battle, in the intensity of a forensic struggle, the young man may well have forgotten the respect and deference which is ever due from a member of the bar to the representative ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells

... must be present. It is in fact the mind handling its materials, and in no sphere, above the simplest, can the mind move without this power of firmly holding and molding facts and relations, phenomena and interior promptings and suggestions. To the forensic reasoner, to the practical master-worker in whatever sphere, such a power is essential not less than to the ideal artist or to the weaver of fictions. Imagination is thus the abstract action, that is, the most intense action, of ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... idle resort for the news of the day. As Africans are interminable speakers, they make excellent lawyers, and know how to spin out a case or involve it in a labyrinth of figures of speech. Mungo Park, who frequently heard these special pleaders, says that in the forensic qualifications of procrastination and cavil, and the arts of confounding and perplexing a cause, they are not easily surpassed by the ablest pleaders in Europe. The following may serve as an example ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... choosing its officials almost fortuitously from the mob, is the exact opposite of the truth. It is our present regime that leaves the selection of our rulers to the chances of birth or wealth or forensic success. Real democracy will stimulate the selection of the best, just as trade union standardisation of wages encourages the employment ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato

... Consiliarius et Antecessor.' The annotator says[185] that these notes had gradually accumulated on the margin of his copy of Cassiodorus, an author who had been a favourite of his from youth, and whom he had often quoted in his forensic speeches. ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... not unfrequently, among other lofty topics, on that which we are here discussing. Then, even at such divine symposium, one at least of the guests is pretty sure to take the part of devil's advocate, and to exercise his forensic skill in showing how easily interchangeable are the names of virtue and iniquity, crime and well-doing. September massacres then find, not their apologist, but their eulogist. Noyades of Carrier, fusilades of Collot d'Herbois, are cited as examples ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... site of the old store—I ask pardon, the "Emporium"—of Jackson, Jones & Co., and what had been the square, staring white court-house—not a Temple but a Barn of Justice—had long since fallen to base uses. The walls which had echoed with forensic grandiloquence were now forced to hear only the bleating of silly sheep. The church, the school-house, and the City Hotel had been moved away bodily. The village grew, as hundreds of other frontier villages had grown, in the flush times; it died, as so many others died, of the financial crash ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... among the prosecutors of Hastings, for greatness and popularity, was Charles James Fox; inferior to Burke in knowledge, imagination, and moral power, but superior in all the arts of debate, the most logical and accomplished forensic orator which that age of orators produced. His father, Lord Holland, had been the rival of the great Chatham, and he himself was opposed, nearly the whole of his public life, to the younger Pitt. His political principles were like ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... If his forensic efforts had been to a nice taste better in some respects, the improvement might have made them in others for general effect worse or of less effect. They were at least faithfully prepared from a width of ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol

... part of the human race guilty, for who is there who does not profit by his neighbour's wants? A soldier, if he wishes for glory, must wish for war; the farmer profits by corn being dear; a large number of litigants raises the price of forensic eloquence; physicians make money by a sickly season; dealers in luxuries are made rich by the effeminacy of youth; suppose that no storms and no conflagrations injured our dwellings, the builder's trade would be at a standstill. The prayer of one man was detected, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... have mooted a knotty point indeed. Alas, that we have no forensic big-wig here to ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... as selfhood perishes on its Calvary, the Christ, the true man, the divine reality, in whom we are one with all men, rises in power in our hearts and unites us to the source of all goodness and joy. Institutional, forensic, external, the Atonement never has been and never will be. But vicarious suffering, willingly accepted, is the great redeeming force by which the world is gradually being won to its true life in ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... the leading forensic journal of this great country (your contemporary Weekly Notes runs you pretty close occasionally in some of its reports), I address you. It was my painful duty a few days ago (I had to "take a note" for a colleague, an occupation more honourable than lucrative), to be present at a cause that was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various

... world where justice has been purer or more impartial; nor, probably, has there ever been a community, of equal numbers, which has produced more numerous or more splendid specimens of juridical and forensic talent. ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... language—and which, at another period, in the Byzantine court, operated to preserve the purity of the mother idiom within the nurseries and the female drawing rooms of the palace, whilst it was corrupted in the forensic standards and the academic—in the standards of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... authorities innumerable among the Indians to tell them—that the nonsense is indispensable, and that its abrogation would involve most awful consequences. What would any rational creature who had never heard of judicial and forensic 'fittings,' think of the Court of Common Pleas on the first day of Term? Or with what an awakened sense of humour would LIVINGSTONE'S account of a similar scene be perused, if the fur and red cloth and goats' hair and horse hair and powdered chalk and ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... speech for Sextius is a declamation against Vatinius, who was one of the witnesses employed by the prosecutor. Instead of examining this witness regularly, he talked him down by a separate oration. We have no other instance of such a forensic manoeuvre either in Cicero's practice or in our accounts of the doings of other Roman advocates. This has reached us as a separate oration. It is a coarse tirade of abuse against a man whom we believe to have ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... Army of the Potomac in Philadelphia, Mr. DANIEL DOUGHERTY made one of the most extraordinary speeches on record, if we except certain forensic efforts of Mr. PUNCHINELLO delivered during the earlier stages of his career from his box. Mr. DOUGHERTY is a Soarer, and a Spreader, and a Screamer. Speaking metaphorically, be goes higher, measures more from the tip ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various

... so plain and fair as to be far more convincing than the argument which was built upon them. Again it may be said that the power to state in this manner is as high in the order of intellectual achievement as anything within forensic possibilities. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... with her relative. She had left her husband behind her, but had brought her children, to whom Isabel now played with equal munificence and tenderness the part of maiden-aunt. Mr. Ludlow, toward the last, had been able to snatch a few weeks from his forensic triumphs and, crossing the ocean with extreme rapidity, had spent a month with the two ladies in Paris before taking his wife home. The little Ludlows had not yet, even from the American point of view, reached the proper tourist-age; so that while her ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... the immediate and necessary course of action. Even in his youth he had kept aloof from the usual proceedings of political novices—the attending in the antechambers of prominent senators and the delivery of forensic declamations. On the other hand he loved the chase—when a youth of seventeen, after having served with distinction under his father in the campaign against Perseus, he had asked as his reward the free range of the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... she NEAREST of kin? Second Daughter, true; but the Daughter; not Daughter OF a Daughter, as you are (as your Serene Electress is), O DURCHLAUCHT of Brandenburg:—consider, besides, you are female, I am male!" That was Pfalz-Neuburg's logic: none of the best, I think, in forensic genealogy. His tenth point was perhaps rather weak; but he had possession, co-possession, and the nine points good. The other Two Sisters, by their Sons or Husbands, claimed likewise; but not the whole: "Divide it," said they: "that surely is the real meaning of Karl ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... certain extent, individually engaged. All the tactics of the opposed armies, down to the minutest legal details, were eagerly and passionately canvassed in every circle. Ladies, who had before probably never heard of "panels" in forensic phraseology, now spoke enthusiastically on the subject; and those on one side expressed themselves indignant at the fraudulent omission of certain names from the lists of jurors; while those on the other were capable of proving the ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... to have "taken all knowledge for his province." His accurate knowledge of the history of all countries and times was a marvel, and, all at his instant command, placed him upon rare vantage ground in the many forensic struggles in which he took part. Woe betide the unfortunate antagonist whose record was other than faultless. He was a born debater, full of resources, and aggressive to the last degree. He never waited for opportunities, but sought them. In great emergencies ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... if every public speaker could hear Sarah Bernhardt give that defense of the Maid of Orleans. Indeed I believe if the forensic eloquence of the stage could be transferred to the pulpit greater audiences and greater rewards would follow. If you doubt this, go read the sermons of George Whitefield or the lectures of John B. Gough and you will wonder at their success unless you take into consideration ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... he respects himself and is happy because all his powers are at play in their natural sphere. There is no compromising of his faculties, no cramping of legal acumen upon the farm; no suppressing of forensic oratorical powers at the shoemaker's bench; no stifling of exuberance of physical strength, of visions of golden crops and blooded cattle amid the loved country life in the dry clergyman's study, composing sermons to put the ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... from the particular service to which it was applied, leads me naturally to speak of the purpose which had allured me up to London, and which I had been (to use a forensic word) soliciting from the first day of my arrival in London to that of my ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... HOW he died for them; how Christ's blood washes away their sins; how it is applied, and to whom; puzzling their brains with theories of the atonement, and with predestination, and satisfaction, and forensic justification, and particular redemption, and long words which (four out of five of them) are not in the Bible, but are spun out of men's own minds, as spiders' webs are from spiders—and, like them, mostly fit ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... at this time was not far from twenty-six years old. His forensic abilities had not been called forth, and his influence weighed but little in comparison with that of older men. But it may be observed that his conduct ever after this, will be found consistent with the sentiments he entertained, and was free to ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... 'Posterity?' Thou appealest to Posterity, thou? My right honourable friend, what will Posterity do for thee! The voting of Posterity, were it continued through centuries in thy favour, will be quite inaudible, extra-forensic, without any effect whatever. Posterity can do simply nothing for a man; nor even seem to do much if the man be not brainsick. Besides, to tell the truth, the bets are a thousand to one, Posterity will not hear of thee, my right honourable ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... professional character is not the only one which a person engaged in a profession has to support. He is not always upon duty. There are services he owes, which are neither parochial, nor forensic, nor military, nor to be described by any such epithet of civil regulation, and yet are in no wise inferior to those that bear these authoritative titles; inferior neither in their intrinsic value, nor their moral import, nor their impression upon society. As a friend, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman



Words linked to "Forensic" :   rhetorical, forensic medicine, forensic pathology, applied



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