Originating in the

legal profession Legal profession is a profession in which legal professionals study, develop and apply law. Usually, there is a requirement for someone choosing a career in law to first pass a bar examination after obtaining a law degree or some other form of l ...

, argument in the alternative is a strategy in which a lawyer advances several competing (and possibly

mutually exclusive In logic and probability theory, two events (or propositions) are mutually exclusive or disjoint if they cannot both occur at the same time. A clear example is the set of outcomes of a single coin toss, which can result in either heads or tails ...

) arguments in order to pre-empt objections by his adversary, with the goal of showing that regardless of interpretation there is no reasonable conclusion other than the advocate's.Margaret Elizabeth McCallum, Christina L. Kunz, Deborah A. Schmedemann
''Synthesis: Legal Reading, Reasoning and Writing in Canada''
CCH Canadian Limited (Toronto, 2003), p. 144. The notion is closely related to

alternative pleading Alternative pleading (or pleading in the alternative) is the legal term in the law of the United States for a form of pleading that permits a party in a court action to argue multiple possibilities that may be mutually exclusive by making use of le ...

, and the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Bart Simpson's classic "I didn't do it, no one saw me do it, you can't prove anything!" could be considered a somewhat humorous example of an argument in the alternative. In a more serious example, a lawyer might argue, not only that his client was elsewhere when a murder or other crime took place, but also that ''even if he had been on the scene'', he would have had no way of accessing the alleged murder weapon. In this way, the lawyer attacks several premises of the prosecution's argument at once. The secondary line of reasoning might be presented to persuade a sub-audience who would not otherwise agree with the primary argument. In regards to

contract law A contract is an agreement that specifies certain legally enforceable rights and obligations pertaining to two or more Party (law), parties. A contract typically involves consent to transfer of goods, Service (economics), services, money, or pr ...

, arguing in the alternative is done where a dispute arises over the terms of a contract. In a particular case it may be best for the

plaintiff A plaintiff ( Π in legal shorthand) is the party who initiates a lawsuit (also known as an ''action'') before a court. By doing so, the plaintiff seeks a legal remedy. If this search is successful, the court will issue judgment in favor of the ...

to allege that a statement made was to become a term of the contract. However the circumstances of the case may be such that the plaintiff cannot be certain that the court will accept this argument. To allow for this possibility, all the plaintiff need do is to argue in the alternative that the statement was in fact a representation (which allows for remedies based on misrepresentation) or again in the alternative that the statement became a part of a collateral contract. Occasionally, such arguments can be confusing to some people, who perceive a self-contradiction or lack of honesty. Generally speaking, this is a case of mistakenly thinking the argument claims ''both'' alternatives are true, when in reality it is claiming only that one or the other of them must be. But arguing in the alternative certainly heightens the complexity of any given presentation.

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Arguing in the Alternative. Oct. 22, 2007
Legal reasoning Legal terminology

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