The Law of Evidence Is Derived from What Book

There is a second way of thinking about probative value. Under the second view, but not the first, the probative value of evidence is assessed in relation to the context. The probative value of E may be low in one state of the other line of evidence and significant in another piece of evidence (Friedman, 1986; Friedman and Park, 2003; see Davis and Follette, 2002, 2003). If the other evidence shows that a woman died when she fell down an escalator in a mall while shopping, it is unlikely that her husband`s story as domestic violence has any probative value to prove that he was responsible for her death. But if the other evidence shows that the wife died from injuries in the matrimonial home and the question is whether the injuries were sustained by an accidental fall from the stairs or inflicted by the husband, the same evidence of domestic violence will now have significant probative value. Another suggestion for resolving the conjunction paradox is to move away from viewing the standard of proof as a quantified threshold of absolute probability and instead interpreting it as a probability ratio. The investigator must compare the probability of the evidence presented at trial under the plaintiff`s theory of case with the probability of proof under the defendant`s theory (both do not have to add to 1) and grant the verdict to the party with a higher probability (Cheng 2013). In a civil case in which the court becomes aware of the fact ex officio, that fact is deemed to have been conclusively proved. In criminal proceedings, however, the defense may always present evidence to refute a point that the court has noted. Legal relevance means.

little more than a minimum of probative value. Each piece of evidence must have a higher value. (cf. Pattenden 1996-7: 373) Other admissibility rules are also considered to focus on forms of argument rather than types of facts. In the United States, Federal Rule of Evidence 404(a)(1) prohibits the use of evidence of a person`s personality «to prove that the person acted in accordance with his or her personality on a particular occasion,» and Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b)(1) provides for such evidence of a crime or wrong. Fourth, we have so far relied on greatly simplified – and therefore unrealistic – examples to facilitate illustration. In real cases, there is usually multiple and dependent evidence, and the probabilities of all possible conjunctions of these elements, which are numerous, must be calculated. These calculations are far too complex to be performed by humans (Callen 1982: 10-15). The inability to conform to the Bayesian model undermines its prescriptive value. Thayer (1898:266, 530) was influential in his view that the law of evidence has no say in logical relevance and that its main task is to deal with admissibility. If the evidence is logically irrelevant, it must be excluded for that reason. If the evidence is logically relevant, it will be received by the court, unless the law – in the form of an exclusion or admissibility rule – requires its exclusion.

In this system, the concept of relevance and the notion of admissibility differ: the rules of admissibility presuppose the relevance of the evidence to which they relate. One of the main purposes of using the adjective «logical» is to indicate the non-legal nature of relevance. As Thayer (1898:269) has argued, relevance is «a matter of logic, not law.» This is not to say that relevance does not have a legal dimension. The law distinguishes between questions of law and questions of fact. A relevant question raises a question of law that is for the judge, not the jury, to decide, and to the extent that relevance is defined in sources of law (e.g., Federal Rule of Evidence 401 mentioned above), the judge must respect the legal definition. But the legal definitions of relevance are, without exception, very broad. Relevance is a logical, not a legal, concept in the sense that, in order to answer a question of relevance and apply the definition of relevance, the judge must necessarily rely on extrajudicial means and is not bound by precedent. Returning to Federal Rule of Evidence 401, it generally states that evidence is relevant when it «tends to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence.» To decide whether the evidence to be presented demonstrates this tendency, the judge must look beyond the law. Thayer insisted. As he said, «There is no relevance test in the law. For this he tacitly refers to logic and general experience» (Thayer 1898:265).

The fact that the defendant`s preferred colour is blue is, barring exceptional circumstances, irrelevant to the question of his intention to steal. It is not the law that tells us this, but «logic and general experience». According to Thayer, the law does not control or regulate the assessment of relevance; It assumes that judges already have the (reasonable) resources to carry out this assessment. Various attempts have been made to find the answers (for a review of these attempts, see Enoch and Fisher 2015: 565-571; Redmayne 2008, Ho 2008: 135–143, 168–170; Gardiner, 2019b; Section 6 of the entry on legal probability). It has been argued that compliance with a legal standard of proof is not only, nor fundamentally, a matter of proof to establish a mathematical probability of liability beyond a certain level. Standards of evidence must be interpreted in epistemic rather than probabilistic terms. One interpretation is that evidence is sufficient to meet a standard of proof only if it is capable of justifying a complete or direct belief in the essential facts that constitute legal responsibility, and mere statistical evidence, as in our examples, cannot justify such a belief. (Nelkin, 2021; Blacksmith 2018; Buchak, 2014; Ho 2008: 89-99.) According to Smith`s account, the statistical evidence in our two examples does not justify believing the statement that the defendant is liable because the evidence does not support this proposition normatively.

Evidence normally supports a statement, only when the situation where the evidence is true and the statement is false is less normal, in that it requires more explanation than the situation where both the evidence and the statement are true.