A communis opinio (Latin for “general opinion,” “prevailing doctrine”) is a phenomenon of the sciences and everyday life. Since the Middle Ages, the communis opinio has been theorized especially in argumentation theory as a subfield of logic and in jurisprudence.
The communis opinio (plural: communes opiniones) played a significant part in medieval and early modern argumentation theory (see Topos). According to the maxims related to the a…