Abstract

In addition to ratio decidendi, judges are allowed to include obiter dicta in their decisions.The interpretative decision that an argument is superfluous may be justified by reference to the verbal presentation of the argument. In this paper I discuss several words and expressions that, in legal practice, are considered to be indicators of additional considerations. Starting from a pragma-dialectical characterization of additional considerations, I evaluate some examples of these cases in order to examine which words and expressions can be seen as indicators of obiter dicta.