Assault This Revised Definition of Evidence

Please assault the following revised definition of evidence in contemporary American trials:

Except when the term “evidence” is manipulated by the law -- e.g, when a matter generally considered evidence is nevertheless called "not evidence" -- to achieve specific instrumental or policy ends, the term “evidence” in American law generally refers to any matter that may increase knowledge about states of the world whenever the knowledge that may be found in such matter either is not available or is not readily available to the ordinary knowledge and reason of triers of fact; but societal beliefs about the likely knowledge-value of a possible source of knowledge about the world work as a drag or as a draft on the legal characterization of a possible source of knowledge as evidence or non-evidence.

Illustration of the hedge in the last sentence of the above definition: if a large majority of literate persons with a college degree believe that a possible source of knowledge almost certainly has no value because they believe that the knowledge-value of that possible source of knowledge rests on propositions, principles, and methods that are almost certainly invalid, the chances decrease that a legal decision maker (such as a trial judge) will characterize such a possible source of knowledge as "evidence." This sort of social influence also works in reverse. For example, if a large fraction of the same social sector -- literate people with college degrees -- strongly believes that some possible source has great knowledge-value for the kind of question at hand, the chances that a legal decision maker will characterize that possible source as "evidence" are enhanced.

In saying what I say immediately above, I am not saying that people who are not literate or who don't have college degrees don't know nuttin'. I don't believe that's true!

I am suggesting that the epistemic views of legal actors such as judges are likely to be affected and predicted by the epistemic beliefs and attitudes of some sectors of society more than by the beliefs etc. of other sectors of society.

Assault This Definition -- Please!

Please assault the following definition of evidence in contemporary American trials:

Except when the term “evidence” is manipulated by the law to achieve specific instrumental or policy ends, in American law the term “evidence” generally refers to any matter that may increase knowledge about states of the world whenever the knowledge that may be found in such matter either is not available or is not readily available to the ordinary knowledge and reason of triers of fact; but “evidence” does not include any matter whose knowledge-value depends on propositions, principles, or methods that a large majority (e.g., 95%) of literate persons with a college degree view [“views”?] as clearly and incontestably false or invalid.

Possible discussion test case: The evidentiary status of the testimony of an “ethics expert.” Consider various kinds of “ethics experts.” Consider different possible purposes of the testimony of such “experts.”

Back to Basics in the Law of Evidence - but How?

Systematic treatises on the law of evidence -- the few that exist -- generally begin with (an attempt at) a definition of "evidence." The definitions I have seen -- I have often complained -- are unsatisfactory. Well, OK, so they are. But how does one do better? Perhaps one way to make a start at doing better is to be more clear about the definition of "definition": What makes a definition good and what makes a definition defective? A post by Lawrence Solum (April 11, 2008) on his blog led me to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Prof. Solum had noted that Anil Gupta had posted new entry (April 10, 2008) in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on "definitions."

Reading Gupta's entry, however, was a bracing experience. Although I have no degree in philosophy, I have been interested in philosophy, logic, epistemology, and similar matters for quite some time. Even so, Gupta's entry was plainly not written for the likes of me. I could -- with considerable labor --, I could make some sense -- a little bit of sense -- out of what he said; i.e., I could get the general drift of some of his arguments and analyses. (As far as I could tell, Gupta was in fact saying sensible and intelligent things.) But I could not follow the details of the arguments.

I have some modest familiarity with symbolic logic. But the notation Gupta uses goes beyond my ken. Perhaps this is because I never knew my symbolic logic well enough to begin with. Perhaps it is partly because symbolic notation keeps changing and an autodidact cannot hope to keep up with such changes. Whatever. I am left with a problem, a question: Where (dear Reader) can I find an intelligent, modern, philosophically-sophisticated, and "accessible" discussion of the nature of definition? Or, dear Reader, would you advise me to avoid the problem of defining defining and talk instead (simply?) about the "concept" (rather than "definition") of evidence? If I did that (in a treatise, let us say), would I really have accomplished (or avoided) anything? I humbly await your opinion, dear Reader.

N.B. If one is in a philosophical mood -- and I often am -- one good place to start might be Peter Achinstein's The Book of Evidence (2001). But Achinstein pays little attention to law or to the role or nature of evidence outside of the hard sciences. So perhaps it would be more advisable for me to get my bearings by reading and studying further James Franklin's The Science of Conjecture (2002).

Lethal Injection: Scientific Evidence and the Federal Courts

In Baze v. Rees, 553 U.S. -- (No. 07–5439, April 16, 2008), which considered a constitutional challenge to the use of lethal injections according to a certain protocol in the execution of death sentences, some members of the Court had some things to say about the ability or inability of federal judges or courts to assess expert and scientific evidence. In theory such judicial sentiments about judicial capacity to assess scientific evidence cannot by themselves change non-constitutional federal law regarding judicial treatment of scientific evidence (unless of course nonconstitutional rules such as Daubert-Kumho or Federal Rule of Evidence 702 manage to violate some constitutional mandate in some set of circumstances). Nonetheless, sometimes the right hand of the federal judiciary may notice what the left hand of the federal judiciary is saying and doing.

The "opinion of the Court" -- the plurality opinion -- in Baze v. Rees states in part:

Much of petitioners’ case rests on the contention that they have identified a significant risk of harm that can be eliminated by adopting alternative procedures....

Permitting an Eighth Amendment violation to be established on such a showing would threaten to transform courts into boards of inquiry charged with determining “best practices” for executions, with each ruling supplanted by another round of litigation touting a new and improved methodology. Such an approach finds no support in our cases, would embroil the courts in ongoing scientific controversies beyond their expertise [emphasis added], and would substantially intrude on the role of state legislatures... .

Thus spake Justice Roberts. Justice Kennedy and Justice Alito joined in this opinion. See also n. 4 of the plurality opinion, which uses a real-world scientific dispute about lethal injection to support the proposition that assessment of the relative risks of different types of lethal injection "would involve the courts in debatable matters far exceeding their expertise."

Justice Alito, who concurred in Justice Roberts' plurality opinion, wrote a separate concurring opinion in which he said:

Showing merely that a modificationwould result in some reduction in risk is insufficient. Moreover, an inmate should be required to do more than simply offer the testimony of a few experts or a few studies. Instead, an inmate challenging a method of execution should point to a well-established scientific consensus. Only if a State refused to change its method in the face of such evidence would the State’s conduct be comparable to circumstances that the Court has previously held to be in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Daubert, by contrast, dramatically decreased -- ostensibly, in any event -- consensus of scientific opinion as a benchmark for determining the admissibility of scientific evidence in federal trials. (But, again, it must be noted that Daubert involved only -- ostensibly, in any event -- the Court's interpretation of a nonconstitutional rule of evidence, Federal Rule of Evidence 702.)

In a concurring opinion, in which Justice Scalia joined, Justice Thomas stated:

We have neither the authority nor the expertise to micromanage the States’ administration of the death penalty in this manner. There is simply no reason to believe that "unelected" judges without scientific, medical, or penological training are any better suited to resolve the delicate issues surrounding the administration of the death penalty than are state administrative personnel specifically charged with the task.

Software to Protect Attorney-Client Communications and Other Confidential Material?

See Tom Foremski, A Lawyer Inside Your PC (April 14, 2008) (describing and discussing UK software "Autonomy Information Governance" (AIG); see announcement here).

The software reportedly serves other purposes as well -- e.g., identification and retrieval of records in response to discovery requests and orders.

Distributed Parallel Processing, Digital Processing, and Assessment in Legal Proceedings of Human Mental States and Operations

Among certain students of the mind, there is a disagreement about whether human thinking is fundamentally connectionist, digital (a/k/a symbolic), or some combination of the two. See generally Gary F. Marcus, The Algebraic Mind: Integrating Connectionism and Cognitive Science (MIT Press, 2003). Does the answer to this riddle have any implications for how adjudicators should assess human mental states and operations such as "sanity," "intentionality," and "recklessness"? If not, why not?

Verdict before Public Trial -- in China in 2004

Amnesty International, People’s Republic of China Executed "according to law"? - The death penalty in China (22 March 2004):

Capital cases are most usually heard initially by intermediate-level courts in China. Appeals are heard by provincial-level High People’s Courts - the court of second instance.

Article 14(1) of the ICCPR states: In the determination of any criminal charge against him, or of his rights and obligations in a suit at law, everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal [...]

Principle 1 of the Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary states: The independence of the judiciary shall be guaranteed by the state and enshrined in the constitution or the law of the country. It is the duty of all governmental and other institutions to respect and observe the independence of the judiciary.

&&&

A trial of first instance held at an Intermediate People’s Court is heard by a collegial panel of three judges, who pass verdict by majority decision based upon evidence and testimonies presented in court. However, it is often the case that a verdict has been approved by a court before a defendant even appears in front of the judges. Each court in China has an adjudication committee, which according to Article 149 of the Criminal Procedure Law is established to decide "[...] difficult, complicated and major cases" which includes cases "[...] when a death sentence may be imposed".(75) Adjudication committees are composed of CCP officials including at least one judge, who sit in private to examine a case file without ever actually hearing statements or meeting defendants or their lawyers. The adjudication committee’s decision on a case is binding on the collegial panel of judges.

Defendants in capital cases are therefore likely to stand trial in a court which has already decided a verdict and possibly even a sentence. This is a probable explanation for the very short duration of trials: it is common for people to be sentenced to death following a trial of first instance lasting no more than one hour.(76) (It should also be repeated in this context that between 1998 and 2002, 99.1% of all trials of first instance ended with a guilty verdict.(77))

2002 Report on Criminal Justice in China

Congressional-Executive Commission on China [CECC], CECC 2002 Annual Report on Criminal Justice:

The Chinese government revised the Criminal Procedure Law in 1996 and the Criminal Law in 1997.(89) The revisions promised increased protection for criminal suspects and defendants and a fairer trial process.(90) The amendments to the Criminal Procedure Law included an expansion of the right to counsel, a more meaningful role for defense attorneys during the pre-trial and trial stages, and other measures to address the problem of "decision first, trial later" (xian ding hou shen).(91) The amended Criminal Law abolished the provision on "analogy" contained in the 1979 Criminal Law. Under this provision, a person could be punished for an act that was not explicitly prohibited by law at the time the act was committed by providing for punishment according to the closest analogous provision of the Criminal Law.(92) The revised Criminal Law also replaced "counterrevolutionary" crimes with "crimes of endangering national security" as part of an effort to depoliticize criminal law, at least on paper.(93)

But as this report notes repeatedly, a wide discrepancy often exists in China between the law on paper and the law in practice. Criminal suspects and defendants frequently do not enjoy in practice the enhanced protections found in the revised laws. Although the revisions to the Criminal Procedure Law and the Criminal Law reflect progress toward internationally recognized criminal justice standards as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international human rights documents, the Chinese criminal justice system still falls far short of international standards.

Absence of an Independent Judiciary

Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights mandate that every individual is entitled to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal.(94) However, the lack of an independent judiciary is a fundamental problem that China must address before it can meet international human rights standards. The Communist Party exerts significant control over the court system. Party political-legal committees often select judges - decisions that are then simply rubber-stamped by the relevant provincial or local people's congresses, which have the formal power to appoint judges.(95) Most senior judges and members of the courts' adjudication committees are Party members.(96) The adjudication committees supervise the work of the court and have the ultimate power to decide any case before the court.(97) Moreover, judges often confer with the relevant political-legal committee in politically sensitive or difficult cases.(98) As long as the Party controls the courts, a fair and impartial judicial process and protection of the fundamental rights of criminal defendants will remain elusive, particularly in cases of political dissidents or others deemed to be threats to "national security."

Right to Counsel and Right to Present a Defense

Under the 1979 Criminal Procedure Law, a defendant had no right to legal counsel prior to seven days before the start of the trial. Under the revised Criminal Procedure Law, defendants may retain counsel much earlier in the criminal process - after the first interrogation or from the day he or she is first subjected to "coercive measures" (e.g., pre-arrest detention (juliu) and arrest (daibu)).(99) Although a significant improvement over the 1979 Criminal Procedure Law, the revised law fails to conform to international standards. For example, it still leaves a suspect without counsel during a "first interrogation." Given the widespread problem of torture, coupled with the fact that the law requires suspects to answer investigators' questions "truthfully," the absence of counsel at the first interrogation is a serious deficiency in China's criminal process.(100)

Although defense lawyers are entitled under the Criminal Procedure Law to meet with their clients during the investigation of an alleged crime, in practice lawyers are frequently denied access to their clients.(101) In cases involving "state secrets," a term that public security authorities construe expansively, a lawyer must first obtain approval from the relevant investigating authority before meeting with his or her client.(102) The authorities frequently invoke "state secrets" to deny suspects access to a lawyer during the investigation phase.(103) When actually allowed to meet with their clients, defense lawyers generally get only one brief meeting, which is usually monitored and sometimes recorded by investigators.(104) Article 96 of the Criminal Procedure Law permits such monitoring, "depending on the circumstances and necessities of the case."

The revised law provides defense counsel greater access to evidence in the possession of the authorities, at least in theory. In practice, the Supreme People's Procuratorate (China's chief prosecutorial authority) has interpreted the relevant provisions of the new law to require access only to formal documents in the file, such as copies of the detention and arrest notices.(105) There is no requirement that prosecutors provide defense counsel access to physical evidence, documentary evidence, crime-scene records, or statements by witnesses or the victim that are in their possession. Moreover, the revised law severely restricts the ability of defense lawyers to collect their own evidence.(106) Another long-standing problem unresolved by the revised Criminal Procedure Law is the absence of witnesses at criminal trials.(107) Although the law requires the testimony of witnesses to be cross-examined at trial, witnesses in criminal cases frequently do not appear in court.(108) Thus, in most trials defense lawyers are faced with the difficult task of trying to contradict written testimony.

Professor Jerome Cohen of New York University Law School told a Commission roundtable that there are disturbing disincentives for lawyers to engage in the practice of criminal defense law. Criminal defense lawyers have encountered intimidation and harassment from the police and prosecutors as they attempt to assist their clients under the revised Criminal Procedure Law.(109) Some defense lawyers have even faced criminal prosecution for zealous representation of their clients. For example, Zhang Jianzhong, a well-known lawyer who has represented some high-profile defendants in major corruption cases, has been detained since May 2002 under circumstances that remain murky. While Mr. Zhang has purportedly been charged with providing a false statement in a commercial case, members of the local criminal defense bar and other observers believe that the authorities are punishing Mr. Zhang for his vigorous criminal defense work.(110) Criminal defense lawyers have also been targeted for prosecution under Article 306 of the Criminal Law, which prohibits a lawyer from forcing or inducing a witness to change his or her testimony or falsify evidence. Any lawyer who counsels a client to repudiate a forced confession, for example, risks prosecution under this provision.(111)

One Report about Criminal Trials in Tibet

Tibet Support Group UK, Tibet Online (1996-2008):

Trial Proceedings

Tibetans suspected of opposing the policies of the PRC in Tibet have been held as political prisoners and prisoners of conscience for lengthy periods, some for decades. A list of 108 political prisoners presented by the US government to China in October 1993 took nine months to elicit a response. China listed 51 as 'cannot be found' and did not even say where the acknowledged prisoners were being held. The charges against these people are often unknown and many dissidents, especially before 1987, were sentenced or executed without trial.

Between October 1987 and July 1989 only about a dozen Tibetan political prisoners were known to have been formally charged with criminal offences and tried by a court. The Chinese authorities, however, started to bring to trial scores of Tibetan political prisoners, the exact numbers of which are not clear, after a new policy was instigated in August 1989 (Defying; p.34).

According to Article 125 of the PRC Constitution, "the accused has the right of defence". However, there is no known case of a Tibetan receiving legal assistance prior to, or during, the hearing. It seems that normal judicial procedures have been abridged. The Chinese criminal justice system in Tibet also has no presumption of innocence. There is no known case of a Tibetan defendant accused of political crimes being acquitted (Defying; p.35).

The PRC Criminal Procedure Law states that all trials be public, except those dealing with state secrets, private individual matters or minors (Articles 8 and 11, PRC Criminal Procedural Law). In reality however, most trials in Tibet are held in secret or before a specially selected audience (Defying; p.34). It is very difficult to obtain first-hand accounts of political trials in Tibet. However, there is one recorded eyewitness report of a public trial of two monks from Ngarong Monastery, held in Rigong, March 1990. They were detained in Autumn 1989 after unfurling a Tibetan national flag in the street. Neither of the accused was represented. Nor were they given the chance to defend themselves. The monks were sentenced to one, and one and a half years imprisonment respectively, for counter-revolutionary crimes (Defying; p.35).

The average term of imprisonment since the trials began in 1989 seems to be six and a half years. There have been prison sentences of up to 19 years handed down to Tibetans found guilty of counter-revolutionary offences. There is growing speculation that Tibetan political prisoners have been executed, though no direct evidence of this since 1987 (Defying; p.36). Prisoner releases are often of older prisoners deemed to pose little threat. Other releases have police reporting conditions attached.

A Constitution for Imperial China

China's Peculiar New Constitution - Elaborate Nine-Year Programme for Leading People Gradually to Parliamentary System - Imperial Will Grants It - Leaders of Political Parties to be Appointed by Throne, and Government Must Not Be Crticized, New York Times (October 19, 1908) (byline dated September 15, 1908):

The constitution under which it is planned to lead China from her present form of despotic government to a Parliamentary system of administration is a remarkable and highly interesting document. It ... is of great length. The preamble alone fills twenty pages....

...

... It is set forth that the Imperial government shall not be criticized on the principle that the "sacred majesty of the sovereign may not be offended against"....

...

Broadly speaking, the document follows the Constitution of Japan as a model. Some of its most striking clauses [including(?) "fourteen laws"] follow:

...

"The Ta Ch'ing Emperor will rule supreme over the Ta Ch'ing Empire for one thousand generations in succession and be honored forever."...

Japan's Law Providing for Trials with Lay Judges Takes Effect May 21, 2009

See Lay judge law to start May 21 next year (Kyodo News), The Japan Times Online (April 9, 2008)

Dirty Drugs & Tricky Numbers

Bruce Vielmetti & Kitty Bennett, "Nigeria Source of Much Heroin," St. Petersburg Times [Florida] (November 2, 1990):

Donald Igwebuike left Nigeria to find fame and fortune kicking field goals in the National Football League.

Many of his countrymen, federal drug officials say, try a different path to fortune: heroin smuggling. Now drug agents are investigating whether Iggy, as he's known to fans, crossed that path too.

Federal officials say Nigerians have emerged as the premier "swallowers" of international smuggling. For a price, they gulp down sealed packets of heroin, fly around the world, and deliver the drug with the aid of laxatives.

&&&

But the national focus on a well-paid professional athlete raises the question of whether Igwebuike could have been drawn into crime because of his Nigerian roots, or has been wrongly suspected because of his nationality.

Over the past few years, airport inspectors in the United States and Europe have begun arresting so many nervous Nigerians with drug-laden intestines that nearly all passengers from that country have become suspect.

&&&

Muhammadu Jibirilla, a spokesman at the Nigerian embassy in Washington, D.C., acknowledged that many young Nigerians have fallen for the lure of quick drug profits, after learning that life in the United States is not the economic utopia they envision by watching television in Lagos.

Jibirilla also said that many of the criminal leaders in his country are blacks who emigrated there from less fortunate countries, not native Nigerians.

The Nigerian government complained earlier this year that the scrutiny amounted to discrimination. Jibirilla said the country is being singled out as a "sacrificial lamb."

The Nigerian government complained earlier this year that the scrutiny amounted to discrimination. Jibirilla said the country is being singled out as a "sacrificial lamb."

Numbers point to Nigerians

In Thailand, part of the so-called "Golden Triangle" that produces about half the heroin imported to the United States, Thai officials have reported that 80 percent of the Nigerians coming into the country are involved with trafficking the drug in Europe and the U.S.

British officials reported that fully a third of all heroin seized in the United Kingdom in 1989 was carried by Nigerians.

And in New York City, U.S. Customs inspectors at John F. Kennedy Airport in the past 12 months found 204 arriving passengers carrying about 250 pounds of heroin in their bodies.

Ninety percent of those arrested were Nigerians, said Joan Baran, a Customs spokeswoman.

Old Scholars Law Abstracts (OSLA)

Old Scholars Law Abstracts (OSLA)

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is pleased to announce the establishment of a new Legal Scholarship Network journal devoted to showcasing the work of scholars who have been in teaching for forty years or more. Edited by Professors Greer Griench and Gary Giezer, the Old Scholars Law Abstracts provides a forum for posting both completed works and works in progress on any subject relating to law.

This Journal provides aging law teachers an avenue for locating decrepit peers working in the same substantive area of scholarship. We hope that this Journal will also be of interest to dis-appointments committees and junior scholars in Venice.

OSLA is printed in large type.

To subscribe to Old Scholars Law Abstracts, please go to http://hq.ssrn.com, where you will find a short registration process. If you have any problems with this process, please consult your personal medical assistant.

Sincerely,

Wesley White
Director emeritus (h.c.), Legal Scholarship Network

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This is Social Science Research Network's (SSRN) general announcements list. All subscribers to other SSRN lists [FEN, ARN, ERN, LSN and MRN] are automatically subscribed. If you receive duplicate mailings, it means you are subscribed to other lists under more than one email address. Please contact admin@ssrn.com to correct this.

Statistical Sampling, "Fluid Recovery," and Hundreds of Thousands of Smokers

In McLaughlin v. American Tobacco Co., 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 7093 (April 3, 2008), Judge Walker, speaking for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, reversed District Court Judge Weinstein's certification of a class of "cigarette smokers allegedly deceived into believing that 'light' cigarettes were healthier than 'full-flavored' cigarettes." Plaintiffs sought (and perhaps will still seek) damages of hundreds of billions of dollars. The legal basis for the smokers' action against the cigarette companies was RICO, the so-called federal racketeering act. The federal trial court's opinion explaining its order for class certification is at Schwab v. Philip Morris USA, Inc., 449 F. Supp. 2d 992 (E.D.N.Y. 2006) (Jack B. Weinstein, Judge).

The reversal of Weinstein's class certification, the NYTimes said, was generally expected. However, even putting aside the huge amount of damages sought, the Second Circuit's opinion is of interest for a couple of reasons.

First -- this point is of interest mainly to some law teachers -- it is very rare for a federal court to hold that a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure or an order interpreting such a Rule violates the Rules Enabling Act. But the Second Circuit effectively said that Judge Weinstein had violated this Act. (The Second Circuit also said that Weinstein's method of calculating damages to individuals violates the Due Process guarantee.)

Second, the Second Circuit's opinion appears to make moot Judge Weinstein's provocative thoughts about methods for calculating damages to individual smokers. Judge Weinstein had said or suggested that a sampling procedure would or might be apopropriate. See Dramatic Use of Statistics in $280 Billion - $800 Billion Cigarette Case.

The Second Circuit, relying on the Rules Enabling Act and the Due Process guarantee, rejected Judge Weinstein's proposed method for calculating damages to individual smokers. See the above extract from Schwab and commentary. Judge Walker was most disturbed by the possibility or probability that aggregate judicially-recovered damages might exceed aggregate actual damages. He also effectively concluded that Judge Weinstein's proposed use of statistical sampling to determine damages to individuals amounts to "fluid recovery." Speaking on behalf of the Second Circuit, Judge Walker said that federal precedent condemns fluid recovery as a violation of Due process. He added a "see also" reference to "2 McLaughlin on Class Actions § 8:16, at 8-95 (3d ed. Dec. 2006 update) ('Courts have repeatedly rejected the use of fluid recovery as a substitute for individualized proof when the class pursues claims that require proof of actual damages.')" But Judge Walker hedged his broad condemnation of fluid recovery and non-individualized proof of damages by saying, "To be sure, this does not mean that defendants are 'constitutionally entitled to compel a parade of individual plaintiffs to establish damages.' In re Antibiotic Antitrust Actions, 333 F. Supp. 278, 289 (S.D.N.Y. 1971)."

Bayesianism Finds Another Home (Outside of the Law) -- but (allegedly) Runs into Difficulties

Dale Purves, M.D., Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, writes:

Information in visual stimuli cannot be mapped unambiguously back onto real-world sources, a quandary referred to as the "inverse optics problem." The same problem exists in all other sensory modalities.

In the case of visual perception, Dr. Purvis takes a "probabilistic approach." His approach also emphasizes the role of experience. He writes:

A Primer on Probabilistic Approaches to Visual Perception

A growing body of evidence indicates that visual percepts are generated according to the empirical significance of light stimuli, rather than the characteristics of the stimuli as such. ...

Background

The first and most influential advocate of using past experience as a means of contending with the uncertain provenance of visual stimuli was Hermann von Helmholtz (1866/1924). Helmholtz summarized his conception of this empirical contribution to visual percepts by proposing that the raw "sensations" generated by the physiological infrastructure of the eye and the input stages of the visual brain could be modified by information derived from experience. Helmholtz described this process as making "unconscious inferences" about reality, thus generating perceptions more nearly aligned with stimulus sources when input-level sensations proved inadequate (op cit., vol. III, p.10 ff). Despite these speculations and the ensuing debate during the second half of the 19th C., vision science during most of the 20th C. has been understandably dominated by the enormous success of modern neurophysiology and neuroanatomy. A plausible assumption in much contemporary vision research has thus been that understanding visual perception will be best achieved by gleaning increasingly precise information about the receptive field properties of visual neurons and the synaptic connectivity that gives rise to these properties. As a result, the role of past experience in determining what observers see has, until recently, received relatively little attention.

Bayes' theorem

If the visual system uses empirical information to generate perceptions that reflect the real-world conditions and object relationships that observers have always had to respond to by appropriate visually-guided behavior, then understanding vision inevitably means understanding how, in statistical terms, physical sources are related to retinal images. By far the most popular approach to meeting this challenge has been Bayesian decision theory. ... In vision research, Bayes' theorem was initially used to develop pattern recognition strategies for computer vision. ... More recently, however, the framework provided by the theorem has been advocated as a means of rationalizing visual perception (or at least the judgments associated with visual perception). ... With respect to vision, the prior describes the relative probabilities of different physical states of the world pertinent to retinal images, i.e., the relative frequency of occurrence of various illuminants, surface reflectance values, object sizes and so on. The second term, P(E|H), is called the likelihood function. If hypothesis H were true, this term indicates the probability that the evidence E would have been available to support it. In the context of vision, given a particular state of the physical world (i.e., a particular combination of illumination, reflectance properties, object sizes etc.), the likelihood function describes the probability that the state would generate the retinal projection in question. The product of the prior and the likelihood function, divided by a normalization constant, P(E), gives the posterior probability distribution, P(H|E). The posterior distribution defines the probability of hypothesis H being true, given the evidence E. In vision, the posterior probability distribution thus indicates the relative probability of a given retinal image having been generated by one or another of the different physical realities that might be the source of the image.

...

Because the posterior distribution indicates only the relative probabilities of a set of possible image sources, a particular source (i.e., a particular combination of illumination and reflectance in the example above) must be selected from this set if the aim is to predict what an observer will actually see. The usual way of addressing this further issue is to assume that the visual system makes this choice according to the behavioral consequences associated with each perceptual "decision". The influence of various consequences is typically expressed in terms of the discrepancy between the decision made and the actual state of the world, which over the full range of the possible choices defines a gain-loss function. Since there is no a priori way to model this function (indeed, given the enormous number of variables involved, a realistic gain-loss function for some aspect of vision would be extraordinarily difficult to determine), the relative cost of different behavioral responses is assumed. ...

...

In sum, Bayesian decision theory determines the physical source(s) capable of generating a given retinal image and the relative probabilities of their actually having done so; the percepts predicted are therefore explicit models of world structure.

Empirical ranking theory

The application of Bayesian decision theory to vision is clearly an important advance in that it formalizes Helmholtz's general proposal about "visual inferences" as a means of contending with stimulus uncertainty. Nonetheless, its implementation presents both conceptual and practical difficulties. With respect to the conceptual implications of Bayesian theory applied to visual perception, the intuitively appealing idea that percepts correspond to physical characteristics such as surface reflectance is problematic and in many instances false (as we explain in a later section). Practical obstacles are the difficulty determining the physical parameters relevant to any specific prior, and the need for a decision rule based on an assumed gain-loss function. Is there, then, any other way of conceptualizing how vision utilizes empirical information to deal with the inverse optics problem?

The alternative to Bayesian decision theory that we have used in rationalizing visual percepts begins by abandoning the idea that vision entails inferences (whether conscious or unconscious) about the properties of the physical world, the concept inherent in the application of Bayes' theorem to visual perception. The conceptual basis of this alternative approach is that the percept elicited by any particular stimulus parameter (e.g., the brightness elicited by the luminance of a stimulus) corresponds not to a statistically determined value of the relevant qualities in the physical world (e.g., the most likely illumination and reflectance values underlying that luminance), but rather to the relative frequency of occurrence of that particular stimulus parameter in relation to all other instances of that parameter experienced in the past. For example, with respect to the perceptual quality of brightness, the brightness perceived in response to the luminance of region of a visual scene would be determined by how often the specific luminance had occurred relative to the occurrence of all the other luminance values in that context in the past experience of observers. In other words, the brightness elicited by a target is determined by the empirical rank of the relevant luminance value within the full range of experience with similar scenes ... . This biological rationale of this approach is that it is obviously desirable to have the full perceptual range for any visual quality (from the brightest percept we can have to the dimmest, for example) aligned with the full range of the relevant stimulus parameters generated by the physical world (from the most intense luminance experienced in visual stimuli to the least intense). ...

It should be apparent from this account that the fundamental difference between these two empirical approaches - Bayesian decision theory and the empirical ranking theory - is their different conception of visual perception. Bayesian decision theory, as it has typically been applied to vision, supposes that perceptions are effectively inferences about physical properties of the objects and conditions in the world. In empirical ranking theory visual perceptions are conceived as statistical constructs that have no direct correspondence to the possible real-world sources of a stimulus. In this alternative framework, visual percepts are simply subjective sensations that link visual stimuli to the empirical significance of their sources according to the success or failure of visually guided behavior in past experience. Deciding which approach is the more useful and the more appropriate framework for predicting and understanding will depend on the ability of these theories to explain the full range of the numerous puzzles vision presents.

References

...

Yang, Z, Purves, D (2004). The statistical structure of natural light patterns determines perceived light intensity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101, 8745-8750.

Howe CQ, Purves D (2005) Perceiving Geometry: Geometrical Illusions Explained in Terms of Natural Scene Statistics. New York: Springer.

Catherine CQ, Lotto RB, Purves D (2006) Empirical approaches to understanding visual perception. J Theor Biol 241: 866-875.

I still think that perception involves "unconscious inference" (but my guess is that Bayesian logic and Bayesian statistics are not sufficient to explain how perception works).

Todd Pettys on Jury Autonomy and Exclusionary Rules

Todd Pettys of the University of Iowa has posted a paper on an odd-sounding but interesting question: whether exclusionary rules are "immoral" because they infringe on jury autonomy. See Todd E. Pettys, "The Immoral Application of Exclusionary Rules," University of Iowa Legal Studies Research Paper No. 08-08 (March, 2008). The abstract of the paper informs the reader that Professor Pettys makes some use of Kant's categorical imperative and Kant's injunction that people be treated as ends rather than means. If Professor Pettys does not put an absolutist spin on the notion of jury autonomy, his paper likely makes an important contribution to thinking about exclusionary rules. Indeed, even if he does advocate a categorical version of Kant's categorical imperative, his paper likely makes an important contribution. (I have not yet read the paper.) The interests of jurors and the role of juries -- pedagogical, exemplary, and otherwise -- in the larger society are matters worth considering. (If it also turns out that giving juries more autonomy also increases -- at an acceptable price -- the accuracy and the justice of jury decisionmaking, so much the better.)

Crime, Procedure, and Evidence: New Book: Table of Contents & List of Contributors

Here is the table of contents and a list of contributors for the new book, J. Jackson, M. Langer & P. Tillers, Crime, Procedure and Evidence in a Comparative and International Context (Hart, forthcoming October 2008):

Contents

Acknowledgements
List of Contributors

1. Introduction: Damaška and Comparative Law
John Jackson, Máximo Langer and Peter Tillers

2. Mirjan Damaška: A Bridge between Legal Cultures
Harold H Koh

I. Diverging and Converging Procedural Landscapes, Changes in the Institutional and Political Environment and Legal Transplants

3. The Decay of the Inquisitorial Ideal: Plea Bargaining invades German Criminal Procedure
Thomas Weigend

4. Sentencing in the US: An Inquisitorial Soul in an Adversarial Body?
William T. Pizzi

5. The New Italian Code of Criminal Procedure: A System Caught between Two Traditions
Luca Marafioti

6. The Two Faces of Justice in the Post-Soviet Legal Sphere: Adversarial Procedure, Jury Trial, Plea-Bargaining and the Inquisitorial Legacy

Stephen C Thaman
7. Some Development Trends in Continental Criminal Procedure in Transition Countries of South-Eastern Europe
Davor Krapac

II. Re-Exploring the Epistemological Environment

8. Dances of Criminal Justice: Thoughts on Systemic Differences and the Search for Truth
Elisabetta Grande

9. Cognitive Strategies and Models of Fact-Finding
Craig R Callen

10. Are There Universal Principles or Forms of Evidential Inference? Of Inference Networks and Onto-Epistemology
Peter Tillers

III. Human Rights Standards and Hybridization in the Transnational and International Prosecution of Crime

11. Extraterritorial Jurisdiction: Applications to Terrorism
M Cherif Bassiouni

12. Faces of Transnational Justice: Two Attempts to Build Common Standards Beyond National Boundaries
John Jackson

13. Reflections on the Hybridization of Criminal Procedure
Mireille Delmas-Marty

14. Confrontation Right across the Systemic Divide
Richard D Friedman

IV. The Challenge for Comparative Scholarship
15. The Good Faith Acquisition of Stolen Art
John henry Merryman

16. Faces of Justice Adrift? Damaška’s Comparative Method and the Future of Common Law Evidence
Paul Roberts

17. Utility and Truth in the Scholarship of Mirjan Damaška
Ronald J Allen and Georgia N Alexakis

18. Sentencing and Comparative Law Theory
Richard S Frase

19. No Right Answer?
James Q Whitman

Postscript

20. Are Marsupials and Mammals That Different? Functions of Trial Procedure
Richard O Lempert

Appendix

Interview of Mirjan Damaška
Máximo Langer

List of Contributors

Ronald J Allen, John Henry Wigmore Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law; Fellow, Procedural Law Research Center, and Chair, Board of Foreign Advisors, Evidence Law and Forensic Sciences Institute, China Political Science & Law University

Georgia N Alexakis, JD Northwestern University School of Law

M Cherif Bassiouni, Professor of Law and President, International Human Rights Law Institute, DePaul University College of Law; President of the International Association of Penal Law

Craig R Callen, Professor of Law, Michigan State University College of Law

Mireille Delmas-Marty, Professor of the University of Paris I; Professor of the Collège de France

Richard S Frase, Benjamin N Berger Professor of Criminal Law, University of Minnesota Law School

Richard D Friedman, Ralph W Aigler Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School

Elisabetta Grande, Professor of Comparative Law, Piemonte Orientale University

John Jackson, Professor of Public Law, Queen’s University Belfast; Fernand Braudel Fellow, European University Institute, 2007-2008

Harold Hongju Koh, Dean and Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law, Yale Law School

Davor Krapac, Professor of Law, University of Zagreb; Judge of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia

Máximo Langer, Professor of Law, University of California, Los Angeles

Richard O Lempert, Eric Stein Distinguished University Professor of Law and Sociology, University of Michigan Law School

Luca Marafioti, Professor of Law, University of Rome III

John Henry Merryman, Nelson Bowman Sweitzer and Marie B. Sweitzer Professor of Law, Emeritus and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Art, Emeritus, Stanford University

William T Pizzi, Professor of Law, University of Colorado School of Law

Paul Roberts, Professor of Criminal Jurisprudence, University of Nottingham School of Law

Stephen C Thaman, Professor of Law, Saint Louis University School of Law

Peter Tillers, Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University

Thomas Weigend, Professor of Law, University of Cologne

James Q Whitman, Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law, Yale Law School

Once Again: What Is Evidence?

Lillie v. United States, 953 F.2d 1188, 1190 (10th Cir., 1992) (civil action; view by judge; footnote omitted):

We acknowledge that jurisdictions vary as to whether a view is treated as evidence or simply as an aid to help the trier of fact understand the evidence. However, we believe such a distinction is only semantic, because any kind of presentation to the jury or the judge to help the fact finder determine what the truth is and assimilate and understand the evidence is itself evidence.

Question 1: Under this formulation, is the opening statement or closing argument of counsel "evidence"?

Question 2: If not -- the law is that such matters are not evidence -- why not? Consider a further question in response to Question 2: Are charts and diagrams, when presented to the trier, that serve only as visual aids -- charts and diagrams that seek to clarify other evidence -- "evidence"? Does it matter whether such "demonstrative" material is presented to the trier during "proof" or whether it is, instead, shown to the trier during closing argument or the opening statement? Should such demonstrative material be shown to the trier only during the opening statement or closing argument? (This would be an unwise restriction, no?)

Question 3: Is expert opinion "evidence"? (The law says that it is.) But isn't some expert opinion just (fancy) "argument"? If so, why aren't the statements of counsel during closing argument treated as witness testimony? Is it because we expect and want trial lawyers to lie (i.e., to make assertions they do not believe are true) during this phase of the trial? If so, what about the assertions of counsel in their opening statements? (Opening statements, the law usually proclaims, are not to contain "argument.") Should counsel be sworn to tell the truth during their opening statements and be prosecuted for perjury if they knowingly fail to do so?

Would it be better to ignore the question of what is and is not "evidence"? (Should we ignore the tyranny of the label "evidence"?) If we did that, it would still be necessary to decide which of the legal restraints and controls that we now place on "evidence" apply to the thing or process whose legal treatment is in question. (A vast number of constitutional and nonconstitutional legal rules and principles apply to things and processes that courts and legislatures have chosen to call "evidence.")

Cardozo on Evidence

In Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97 (1934) Justice Cardozo, speaking on behalf of a divided Court, made some provocative comments about views, trials, and definitions. In Snyder the defendant was charged with murder. At his trial the jury was taken to the crime scene and allowed to view the crime scene. But defendant was not allowed to be be present during the view. The question was whether defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial and his right of confrontation had been violated. Justice Cardozo said:

There is an approach to the subject from the viewpoint of history that clarifies the prospect. We may assume that the knowledge derived from an inspection of the scene may be characterized as evidence. Even if this be so, a view is not a "trial" nor any part of a trial in the sense in which a trial was understood at common law. This is seen from two circumstances. In the first place, the judge is not required to be present at a view, though he may go there if he will. In the second place, the practice for many years was to have a committee of the jurors, the usual number being six, attend at the view to represent the whole body. ... We have no thought to suggest that a view by a part of a jury is permissible today. That question is not before us. There is significance, none the less, in the fact that it was permissible in England, the home of the principle that a defendant charged with felony has the privilege of confronting his accusers and of being present at his trial. Certain it is that in the land where these maxims had their genesis and from which they were carried to our shores the proceeding known as a trial was thought of as something very different from the proceeding known as a view. To transfer to a view the constitutional privileges applicable to a trial is to be forgetful of our history.

A fertile source of perversion in constitutional theory is the tyranny of labels. Out of the vague precepts of the Fourteenth Amendment a court frames a rule which is general in form, though it has been wrought under the pressure of particular situations. Forthwith another situation is placed under the rule because it is fitted to the words, though related faintly, if at all, to the reasons that brought the rule into existence. A defendant in a criminal case must be present at a trial when evidence is offered, for the opportunity must be his to advise with his counsel, Powell v. Alabama, supra, and cross-examine his accusers, Dowdell v. United States, supra; Commonwealth v. Slavski, supra. ... Let the words "evidence" and "trial" be extended but a little, and the privilege will apply to stages of the cause at which the function of counsel is mechanical or formal and at which a scene and not a witness is to deliver up its message. In such circumstances the solution of the problem is not to be found in dictionary definitions of evidence or trials. It is not to be found in judgments of the courts that at other times or in other circumstances the presence of a defendant is a postulate of justice. There can be no sound solution without an answer to the question whether in the particular conditions exhibited by the record the enforced absence of the defendant is so flagrantly unjust that the Constitution of the United States steps in to forbid it.

Of course, in the absence of some kind of tyranny of labels, the rule of law can hardly exist, can it? What Cardozo wanted is a sensible, or appropriate, or "just," interpretation of the scope of constitutional "labels" such as "trial," confrontation," and "due process." (In this particular case, Justice Cardozo emphasized in part that the reach of constitutional language must be sensitive to the purpose or purposes of the constitutional language. [Of course, Cardozo could not really escape the tyranny of labels: even matters such as purposes and historical practice must ordinarily be communicated by "labels." The true question question is which label or set of labels controls.])

In any event, is a view evidence or isn't it? Answer: the courts are divided on the question, but the trend is toward the answer "yes."

What Is Evidence?

Legal scholars have not done a very good job of defining "evidence." However, if one looks to philosophical literature on the definition of evidence, one may not find much enlightenment there either. For example, the author of the entry Evidence (11 August 2006) in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy seems to believe that evidence in legal proceedings consists mainly or exclusively of tangible things. Hence, for purposes of legal scholarship the discussion in the Stanford Encyclopedia seems to be a non-starter.