“Without proof of negligence or a causative connection”: On causal argumentation in the discourse of the Supreme Court of Ireland’s judgments on data protection

This study investigates the discourse and use of causal argumentation in a corpus of Supreme Court of Ireland’s judgments on data protection. The research consisted of two main stages. The first was a preliminary quantitative study of recurrent phraseology, in order to identify its most common usage patterns in context. The second stage lay in a qualitative study of the judgments where the usage patterns established earlier on were observed to be most frequent. This allowed to detect and reconstruct the textual sequences embedding causal argumentation. While phraseology was observed to shed light on the subject matter covered by the corpus as well as the interpretive and argumentative dimensions inherent in the Court’s discourse, the argumentative analysis provided evidence of the flexibility of causal argumentation as a reasoning tool that ties in with valid legal norms at two main levels. The first is the combination of causality with more literal approaches to legal text. The second level is represented by more schematic or teleological approaches to norms, as was the case with the necessity to embrace principles or uphold values underlying domestic statutes, international law or the Constitution of Ireland.