Analysis of Evidence: How to Do Things with Facts Based on Wigmore's Science of Judicial Proof

Abstract

An internationally known legal text, Anderson and Twining's Analysis of Evidence begins with the fundamental premise that basic methods of organizing and analyzing evidence are important and teachable skills that are generally neglected in legal education. The volume lays a foundation for mastering a necessary set of basic skills in fact analysis (the development, analysis, and marshaling of raw data): constructing, reconstructing and criticizing arguments about disputed questions of fact; developing techniques for structuring problems and organizing masses of data; and developing techniques for detailed analysis and evaluation of particular data in the context of complex arguments. Beginning with John Henry Wigmore's insight that methods and principles of scientific inquiry and investigation can be usefully applied to the analysis of the evidence germane to legal disputes, the authors use materials, cases, questions, and exercises to illustrate and illuminate the contexts in which rigorous factual analysis is necessary, and to describe the means by which the principles and the methods of analysis can be applied to specific cases. Although written for law students, Analysis of Evidence is of interest to a broad, multidisciplinary audience, including students of logic, historians, intelligence analysts, psychologists, police investigators, and others interested in applying techniques of analysis and inference to bodies of data.

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