Abstract
Abstract Scholars have seldom explored relationships among Lord Kames's legal career and writings and Elements of Criticism. After considering why Kames did not write a rhetoric of legal advocacy, I argue that Kames's legal career and writings offered precedents for Elements in three areas: fulfilling social aspirations, using principles of human nature for pedagogical purposes, and using a mode of reasoning that involved abstracting principles from particular cases. I provide a more complete understanding of theElements and suggest that aims and methods of Scots law may have penetrated eighteenth-century Scottish rhetorics more broadly.