Enter your thoughts & news here and, please, in the evidence module of Spindle Law. Go in particular to this node (reliable vel non?) of the evidence module. (I am interested in legal developments abroad as well as domestic legal developments.)
It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.
Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser
The New York Times castigates Cardinal (formerly Bishop) Egan for uttering these words:It’s marvelous ... when you think of the hundreds and hundreds of priests and how very few have even been accused, and how very few have even come close to having anyone prove anything.The NYTimes apparently thinks that Cardinal Egan's own words condemn him.
But what if what cardinal Egan said was true?
In the Middle Ages it took a lot of witnesses to overcome the testimony of a single bishop (or so it is sometimes said, perhaps by the same people who say that folks in the Middle Ages thought that the earth is flat). Today -- as the New York Times would apparently have it -- not even the testimony of a hundred or a thousand bishops can overcome the testimony of even a single money-bedazzled plaintiff.
I am tired of anti-religious bigotry. It is time to attack this sort of bigotry. Perhaps the power of the "new media" can overcome the power of the "old media" in this arena? I surely hope so. Ye believers in religious freedom, unite!
P.S. I am against sexual predators. However, I do not favor the idea that every accuser of a priest should be believed -- and paid off. (Yes, Virginia, there are some liars out there.)
It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.
Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser
Some passages are too delicious not to quote (do you catch my meaning?):There are obvious difficulties with presenting the arguments in the original works of Derrida or Lacan, or Baudrillard. They do not write in any natural language, they do not put the premises before the conclusion, the conclusion is distributed over the text rather than appearing in any one sentence, positions are assumed to have been established outside the texts one is actually reading, in previous texts, or perhaps future ones, and so on.James Franklin, What Science Knows and How It knows It 42 (Encounter Books 2009).
For some unknown reason, Franklin's comments about postmodern folk put me in mind of a different kind of strange philosophy -- J.L. Austin's. Austin's "ordinary language" philosophy is still thought of as having been a respectable sort of thing. But some of Austin's extraordinary ordinary language can make one wonder why:
Are cans constitutionally iffy? Whenever, that is, we say that we can do something, or could do something, or could have done something, is there an if in the offing—suppressed, it may be, but due nevertheless to appear when we set out our sentence in full or when we give an explanation of its meaning?J.L. Austin, “Ifs and Cans,” Proceedings of the British Academy (1956), in Philosophical Papers, p. 205 (Oxford: 2nd ed., 1970)
Sometimes I'm quite glad I decided to become a law professor rather than a modern (or, worse yet, postmodern) philosopher.
It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.
Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser
In 1970 Michael O. Finkelstein (with William B. Fairley) proposed that under some circumstances a jury in a criminal trial might be invited to use Bayes' Theorem to address the issue of the identity of the criminal perpetrator. In 1971 Laurence Tribe responded to this proposal with a rhetorically-powerful and wide-ranging attack on what he called "trial by mathematics." Finkelstein responded to Tribe's attack by further explaining, refining, and defending his proposal. After a brief rejoinder, Tribe fell silent – forever – on the issue of the use of mathematical and formal methods to dissect or regulate uncertain factual proof in legal proceedings. However, Tribe's silence did not end the debate about "trial by mathematics." Tribe's attack on "trial by mathematics" had exactly the opposite effect: Tribe's attack precipitated a decades-long debate about mathematical analysis of factual inference and proof. However, that debate, which continues to this day, became generally (but not uniformly) unproductive, sterile, and repetitive long ago. Although surely a variety of factors led to this unfortunate condition, the debate about "trial by mathematics" was doomed to die with a whimper rather than a bang because two misunderstandings plagued much of the debate from the very beginning. The first misunderstanding was a widespread failure to appreciate that mathematics (including the probability calculus and Bayes' Theorem) is part of a broader family, or class, of rigorous methods of reasoning, a family of methods that is often called "formal." The second misunderstanding was a widespread failure to appreciate that mathematical and formal analyses (including but not only analyses that use numbers) can have a large variety of purposes. However, it is not too late to right this upended ship. Before any further major research project on "trial by mathematics" is begun, interested researchers in mathematics, probability, logic, and related fields, on the one hand, and interested legal professionals, on the other hand, should try to reach agreement about the possible distinct purposes that any given mathematical or formal analysis of inconclusive argument about uncertain factual hypotheses might serve. Putting aside the special (and comparatively trivial) case of mathematical and formal methods that make their appearance in legal settings because they are accoutrements of admissible forensic scientific evidence, I propose that discussants, researchers, and scholars of every stripe begin by carefully considering the possibility that mathematical and formal analysis of inconclusive argument about uncertain factual questions in legal proceedings could have any one (or more) of the following distinct purposes:
1. To predict how judges and jurors will resolve factual issues in litigation.2. To devise methods that can replace existing methods of argument and deliberation in legal settings about factual issues.
3. To devise methods that mimic conventional methods of argument about factual issues in legal settings.
4. To devise methods that would capture some but not all ingredients of argument in legal settings about factual questions questions.
5. To devise methods that support or facilitate existing, or ordinary, argument and deliberation about factual issues in legal settings by legal actors (such as judges, lawyers, and jurors) who are generally illiterate in mathematical and formal analysis and argument.
6. To devise methods that clarify – that better express and increase the transparency of – the logic or logics that are immanent, or already present, in existing ordinary human inconclusive reasoning about uncertain factual hypotheses that arise in legal settings.
7. To devise methods that have no practical purpose – and whose validity cannot be empirically tested – but that serve only to advance understanding – possibly contemplative understanding – of the nature of inconclusive argument about uncertain factual hypotheses in legal settings.
It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.
Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser
My congratulations to Henry Prakken, Bart Verheij, and Floris Bex, who have collaborated in meticulous and pathbreaking research on the the nature of factual inference and proof. Their work will dictate many research agendas for decades to come.
It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.
Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser
