A "straw man" is a kind of argument used not only in a legal
context but also in a philosophical, political or academic one, or
even in a private dispute. The name "straw man" is a metaphor based
on a scarecrow or other dummy stuffed with straw who is not a real
person and which is easily knocked over. In a straw man argument,
the person arguing takes pains to completely refute a position
which his opponent does not endorse, claiming that he has in fact
refuted the opponent's position. The argument which he has refuted
is a "straw man", a dummy argument, an argument which isn't the
real argument his opponent is advancing. E.g. If Person 1 says that
the earth is not in fact a sphere (being an oblate spheroid), and
person 2 advances argument after argument why the earth is not
flat, concluding that person 1 is clearly wrong, the world is not
flat but is a sphere, person 2 has employed a straw man argument by
attacking the position that the earth is flat when that was not
person 1's argument. We can say that person 2 has set up and
knocked down the straw man that the earth is flat.
