Sunday, July 12, 2009

How Many Evidence Marshaling Strategies Are There?

You will forgive me, I trust, if I return to MarshalPlan once again. You see, I think of MarshalPlan as my baby.

  • Other people who may not wish to be publicly acknowledged, deserve part of whatever credit is due for the creation of MarshalPlan. It is possible my former collaborators think me slightly daft for continuing to develop MarshalPlan. If they do, I would humbly beg to differ with them. I admit I am "possessed" by the MarshalPlan project. But this is not only because I think MarshalPlan may be very useful to legal professionals such as litigators and investigators, but also because I think MarshalPlan says something important -- fundamental -- about human knowledge.
  • The following are the evidence marshaling stacks that so far exist in MarshalPlan -- and each one of these stacks (or files) is the equivalent of a method of marshaling, or organizing, evidence:

    Analysts (Users)
    Legal Actors
    Event Actors
    Witnesses
    Case Theory
    Evidence of Material Facts
    Evidence for and against Material Facts
    Legal Argument
    Legal Rules
    Legal Source Material
    Loose Thoughts
    Network Manager (I suggest you begin by using Revolution Player to run this stack.)
    Possibilities
    Elimination of Possibilities
    Questions & Issues
    Raw Evidence
    Records
    Actor Scenario
    Case Scenario
    Tangible ("Real") Evidence
    Actor Time Line
    Case Time Line
    Time Line for Tangible Evidence
    Witness Time Line
    Narrative, Story-Telling, and Rhetoric
    Investigation and Proof Time Line
    Witness Credibility
    Probative Value (a/k/a "Argument from Evidence to Factual Hypothesis," or "Factual Inference" proper)

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    You can run the above stacks with Revolution Player. (To download a non-Windows-operating-system player, go here.)

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    N.B. Did you notice that time plays an essential role in many of the evidence marshaling strategies found above?

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    The dynamic evidence page

    Coming soon: the law of evidence on Spindle Law

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