A Philosophy of Evidence Law

Abstract

The dominant approach to evaluating the law of evidence takes the standpoint of a detached observer and focuses on how the trial system should be structured to guard against the production of wrong verdicts. This book offers a different account from the perspective of the person responsible for making findings of fact. From that angle, complex and intertwining ethical and epistemic considerations come into view. After setting the stage with an introduction to general aspects of fact-finding and an analysis of the epistemology of trial deliberation, the two approaches are applied to three core areas of evidence law: the standards of proof, the rules on hearsay, and ‘similar facts’ (or, as it is also called, ‘previous misconduct’ or ‘other crimes, wrongs, or acts’). The author argues that it is only by exploring the nature and content of deliberative responsibility that the role and purpose of much of the law can be fully understood. In many cases, values other than truth have to be respected, not simply as side-constraints on, but as values which are internal to legal fact-finding. A party does not merely have a right to have the substantive law correctly applied to true findings of fact; she has, more broadly, a right to a just verdict, where justice incorporates an ethical evaluation of the reasoning process which led to the verdict and is conceived as a relational concept that stresses the virtue of emphatic care. There is an important sense in which the court must not only find the truth to do justice, it must do justice in finding the truth.

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