Book: Circumstantial Evidence and Corruption

This book looks interesting: Edward Hoseah, Corruption in Tanzania: The Case for Circumstantial Evidence (Cambria Press, 2008) (why didn't I notice this book earlier?). The Amazon blurb:

This book examines circumstantial evidence in the context of its utility in investigation and prosecution of corruption cases in Tanzania. Circumstantial evidence has not been given the due prominence it deserves under traditional common law. In this book, the author expounds and articulates the efficacy of circumstantial evidence in the dispensation of corruption cases in courts of law. The emerging approach of circumstantial evidence is intended to cure the current weaknesses of investigation and prosecution of corruption cases--a daunting task for all law enforcements and courts who regard direct evidence paradigm as more reliable than circumstantial evidence. The book provides a strong case for circumstantial evidence approaches to improve the effectiveness and contribution of the legal system in the fight against corruption.

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What Is Truth?

Konstantin Kakaes, Can We Teach Computers What “Truth” Means?It’s harder than it sounds., Slate (Feb. 26, 2012):

I’d like to begin with two different ideas of truth. The first appears to be the simplest: “It is true that 1+1=2.” The second is from the beginning of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Now, these sound like quite different ideas about truth. But the process of trying to teach computers to understand truths like these—difficult for both notions—is revealing the ways in which they are similar.

The term artificial intelligence was coined in 1955 by a computer scientist named John McCarthy. Early on, McCarthy enunciated his key aim as the systematization of common sense knowledge. In 1959, he wrote: “[A] program has common sense if it automatically deduces for itself a sufficiently wide class of immediate consequences of anything it is told and what it already knows.” This has proven very difficult, primarily because it is difficult to encode, in a systematic fashion, what it means to say something is true.

[etc.]
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Word Inflation #3

1. singer
2. vocalist
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Word Inflation #2

1. predict
2. prognosticate
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Word Inflation

1. press
2. pressure
3. pressurize
#3 seems to be favored by BBC (e.g., this or that politician was "pressurized" to do this or that).
 
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Book on "Terror Courts"

I look forward (if that's the right phrase) to reading Jess Bravin, The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay (Yale University Press, 2013).
By the accounts of many people - e.g., Jeffrey Toobin, Sir Kenneth Keith, Anne Marie Slaughter, Garrett Epps, John D. Hutson,  and Louis E. Caldera - this book is superb.
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Death of Alan Westin

See Margalit Fox, Alan F. Westin, Who Transformed Privacy Debate Before the Web Era, Dies at 83 NYTimes (Feb. 22, 203).

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ambiguous versus fuzzy

Discuss: Some or many ambiguous statements are fuzzy. But many fuzzy statements are not ambiguous. Inspiration: Lotfi Zadeh &&& The dynamic evidence page

Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Jurors and Lay Assessors in Trials in South Africa

The Pistorius case led journalists to discover that South Africa does not have the sort of jury system that is found in the United States and (in some trials) in the U.K.


"Review of the Law of Evidence," SOUTH AFRICAN LAW REFORM COMMISSION, Issue Paper 26, Project 126 (January 2008) (footnotes omitted): 2.9  Lay participation in the formal judicial system in South Africa dates back at  least to the nineteenth century where justices of the peace and occasionally elected  veldcornetten “administered law in many frontier areas”. Although prior to 1954 there was not an absolute colour bar in the vast majority of cases the jury was compromised of nine white men. Trial by jury in civil cases was abolished in 1926  and there was a steady decline of the use of juries in criminal trials and by the 1960’s less than one percent of criminal trials was by jury. Jury trials were abolished by  the Abolition of Juries Act 34 of 1969. In the 1970's and 80's there was minimal lay  participation in the formal judicial system. The 1990's saw the re-emergence of the  use of lay assessors in both the magistrates and superior courts. Section 34 of the Magistrates’ Court Act 32 of 1944 permits the court in civil actions, ”upon the  application of either party, to summon to its assistance one or two persons of skill  and experience in the matter to which the action relates who may be willing to sit and  act as assessors in an advisory capacity”. Section 93ter makes provision for the use of lay assessors in criminal trials. A magistrate presiding over a criminal trial may if he/she deems it expedient for the administration of justice, before any evidence has been led or in considering a community-based punishment in respect of any person who has been convicted of any offence, summon one or two assessors to assist him or her at the proceedings. However, the provisions are more peremptory in respect of murder trials in the regional court where the presiding officer must summon two assessors to assist him or her, unless the accused requests that the trial be proceeded with without assessors, in such a case the use of assessors is within the discretion of the presiding officer. In the High court it is generally within the presiding officer’s discretion whether to sit with an assessor in criminal matters. Lay assessors are used in a number of civil tribunals.
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The Commission considered the question of the appropriate relationship between the law of evidence, on the one hand, and juries and assessors, respectively, on the other hand. The Commission wisely discussed the differences and similarities between the common system of trial by jury and South Africa's current assessor system (footnotes omitted): 2.10 Professor SE van der Merwe succinctly summarises the distinction between jurors and assessors as follows:    “Assessors in lower courts and in the Supreme Court can to some extent be  compared with jurors as they are all finders of fact and do not decide legal issues. But our system of adjudication differs materially from trial by jury. The role of jurors can briefly be summarized as follows: jurors are lay people and sole finders of fact. They listen to the evidence and hear arguments, and they receive a summing-up and instructions from the presiding judicial officer: They are then called upon in their capacity as sole finders of fact to consider  and reach their verdict in the absence of the presiding judicial officer. And they are not required to advance reasons in support of their verdict. But in our system the judge or magistrate is at all times either a sole finder of fact or, where assessors are involved, a co-finder of fact. A judge must give reasons for his verdict. Magistrates almost invariably do give reasons for their verdict and, failing which, they may in certain circumstances be legally required to do so. It is true that the function of assessors can be compared with the function of jurors, because the function of assessor - with one exception - is also limited to fact finding. But assessors - unlike a jury - must give reasons for their verdict. They either agree or disagree with the presiding judicial officer’s reasons and finding, and in the event of a disagreement must furnish their own reasons in a separate judgment which is read out in court by the presiding judicial officer. And assessors - unlike jurors - are under constant and immediate judicial guidance in the sense that a judge (or magistrate) and the assessors involved in the trial have joint deliberations in reaching their respective verdicts. During these deliberations the presiding judicial officer can and must draw the attention of assessors - who of course may be lay people - to certain rules which govern the evaluation of evidence, for example, the cautionary rule, the rules governing inferences drawn from circumstantial evidence, and those rules which determine the effect of an accused's silence on the evaluation of the prosecution’s prima facie case.”
2.11 The absence of a jury and the somewhat different role of lay assessors in our courts as joint fact finders who are subject to the continual guidance of the court and who are required to give reasons for their decisions calls into question whether our jury based rules of evidence remain appropriate.
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The Commission discussed some interesting general questions -- or, in any event, general questions that interest me. For example, in its Conclusion the Commission stated: 5.  FORMUALTING [sic] PRINCIPLES FOR REFORM: QUESTIONS FOR COMMENT Χ What is the scope of the law of evidence? Should the focus of evidence law be exclusively on the trial or should other stages of the process be considered as well? Χ Should the exclusionary rules directed at controlling juries in the exercise of their fact finding function be re-placed by judicial discretion?  Χ To what extent should relevance and weight be regulated?  Χ To what extent should  public and social interests be reflected in evidence law?  Χ Should there be different rules for different courts and tribunals? Χ What should be the primary purpose of the rules of evidence in the trial process? In particular to what extent should evidence law facilitate all or any of the following policies:  -  rationality and truth-finding?  - party freedom?  - procedural fairness?  - public interest?  - efficiency and finality?
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The Commission discussed the views of, inter alia, William L. Twining, John Henry Wigmore, Kenneth Culp Davis, and John Jackson.
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More later.
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Shaken Baby Syndrome

The following is a 2011 article with lots of unsystematic to-and-fro about the forensic and medical validity or invalidity of the shaken baby syndrome:

Mark Hansen, Unsettling Science: Experts Are Still Debating Whether Shaken Baby Syndrome Exists ABA Journal (Dec. 1, 2011).

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Death of Ronald Dowrkin

Sad news:
Adam Liptak, Ronald Dworkin, Legal Philosopher, Dies at 81 NYTimes (Feb. 14, 2013).
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Inference and Action in the World over Time

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A Hop, Skip & a Jump Through Fact Investigation

Fact Investigation Course Home Page:

Purpose(s) of Fact Investigation course:

etc. (continue with linked web page, see above)
Assignment 1:

etc.
How do you start an investigation?:

etc.
Trifles and abduction in fact investigation:

etc.
Assignment no. 2:

The important role of  preferences in fact investigation:

etc.
Assignment no. 3 (on legal marshaling):

Tillers & Schum discuss legal marshaling in their paper A Theory of Preliminary Fact Investigation:

etc. (note: the discussion of legal marshaling takes place at two points in the paper)
Notes on legal marshaling:

etc.
Assignment no. 4 (time lines):

A note about time lines:

etc.
Assignment no. 5 (scenarios):

My online paper, which is in large part about scenarios (a paper that was inspired in part by Glenn Shafer's work):

etc.
A note on dealing with bloomin' buzzin' confusion in investigation:

etc.
Assignment no. 9 and assignment no. 11 - on assessing probative value and witness credibility, respectively:

MarshalPlan cards on assessing probative value of evidence:

One MarshalPlan card of many on assessing witness credibility:

Assignment on case theories - or the whole ball of wax:

MarshalPlan cards about case theory development and assessment:
Title card:

Explanation, part 1:

Explanation, part 2:

A MarshalPlan card illustrating a very partial partial case theory:

Loose thoughts, which are an important (and perhaps indispensable) pathway to a case theory:

There are other important forms of evidence marshaling -- e.g., narrative and rhetoric and advocacy. They are part of MarshalPlan, but they are not discussed in this post.  Many of them appear in the following card:

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Open Source LiveCode & MarshalPlan, My Evidence Marshaling Software Application

RunRev, the company that developed and owns LiveCode -- a scripting language that is a descendant of Revolution & HyperCard, -- recently announced that it is turning LiveCode into open source software. This development interests me because my evidence marshaling software application MarshalPlan (which is a descendant of a HyperCard-based software application that David Schum and I developed 20 years ago) is based on the scripting language LiveCode. When LiveCode becomes open source software, I will probably have a much easier time distributing my evidence marshaling application - MarshalPlan - to the world at large. Since I believe MarshalPlan incorporates and illustrates important insights into and productive methods of evidence marshaling, I believe this turn of events is probably a good thing. But a caveat lurks in my brain: I am not versed in "intellectual property." I will have to figure out how or if I can retain any "intellectual property" in future iterations of MarshalPlan if I use Open-Source-LiveCode to develop future iterations of MarshalPlan and if I distribute such Open-Source iterations of MarshalPlan to other people. (I do not expect to get rich from MarshalPlan. But I confess I would like to retain the faint possibility of making some money from my [crude] "app.")

In its announcements RunRev asks the public to "pledge" money to the enterprise of converting LiveCode into open source software. Have I walked into an NPR or PBS fundraiser? Has RunRev turned into a charitable religious organization? Why should people give away their hard-earned money to help RunRev make more money? Am I being retrograde? Is RunRev indirectly selling shares or some sort of property interest in its new enterprise? If so, is this solicitation of "pledges" legally kosher? (Another thing I profess to know nothing about: the law governing shareholding, securities, blue sky claims, and similar matters.) 

Statistics in Popular Discourse

See David Brooks, The Philosophy of Data NYTimes (Feb. 4, 2013)

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Firearms and Toolmarks Identification

William A. Tobin & Peter J. Blau, Hypothesis Testing of the Critical Underlying Premise of Discernible Uniqueness in Firearms-Toolmarks Forensic Practice (Dec. 6, 2012) (footnotes omitted):

Mainstream scientists are likely in agreement that, at some level above the subatomic, every object in the universe is probably unique. Nevertheless, it is argued in the scholarly literature, and correctly in the authors’ opinions, that uniqueness is “largely irrelevant” to the forensic identification practices, which would include firearms identification. The more seminal issue for forensic practice, however, is that of discernible uniqueness. Similar to the familiar riddle of a tree falling in a forest with no one around, if uniqueness does, in fact, exist, what is the probative value if firearms examiners cannot discern it? But to discern uniqueness at some level, it is axiomatic that two conditions must exist: (1) some criteria, indicia, or “parameters of detection” for uniqueness, and (2) rules of application for those indicia to discern “same” from “different.” An exhaustive review of the domain literature reveals no such criteria. Thus, there is no apparent official or scientifically acceptable protocol for distinguishing ‘same’ from ‘different’. 
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On Scientific Models

Interview with David Stainforth [climate scientist], 7 The Reasoner No. 2 (February [sic] 2, 2013):

KS [Katie Steele]: What is the significance of your emphasis on policy here? Are you saying that you now devote a lot of time to science communication, or, rather, that you approach your work as a climate scientist in a different way, i.e., with an eye to policy relevance?
DS: The latter. The attention to policy has lead to a shift in emphasis in my scientific work—from modelling and running simulations to the proper interpretation of the data output of these model simulations.
In the past I set up and did a lot of runs (simulations) of these large complex climate models called General Circulation Models [GCMs]. This involves a lot of time and a lot of hard work in getting these computer models up and running. . . these simulations are difficult to produce. But I have done my time in this respect. The climateprediction.net project that I was involved in is still running, and that’s great, but it is up to others now to facilitate the simulations.
The important issue for me now is this: these climate model simulations produce vast output, and there are so many questions about how to analyse these big data sets. . . In short, what does it all mean? Why run these simulations? We need to really think about what we can get out of these climate models and how the results should be presented. It is tempting to just keep making the models more and more complicated and apparently derive more and more detailed predications [sic] of the type that policy-makers want. Moreover, the power of computers has its own allure. . . such shiny sophisticated machines that seem to offer endless opportunities for fast and powerful problem-solving. . . for the mathematically-minded, there is a temptation to create more and more complicated models. We need to be very careful, however, about faithfully representing what we actually know about the future climate on the basis of model simulations.
KS: I see. So what do you think the models can be used for? Do they yield predictions? Is the ‘pulling back’ just a matter of being more modest about the precision of the predictions that we can derive from climate models? Or should we use climate models in quite a diff erent way altogether?
DS: I think it is best to think of climate models as research tools—they are useful for understanding interactions between diff erent parts of the climate system. Of course, we don’t want to give up on predicting the climate, but we need to be realistic about climate prediction, and in particular, multi-decadal climate prediction, which is of interest to policy-makers. Climate models should be seen as just one of the inputs that allow us to formulate scenarios of how the climate could change in response to diff erent  forcings. [Forcings are external forces that change the dynamics of the system; a prominent forcing is increased carbon dioxide emissions.] We should aim to formulate scenarios that collectively tell us how the climate could change over time, and give us a general indication of the sensitivity of the climate system.
The main point here is that the output of climate models should not be taken at face value—as predictions of future climate—and presented in more or less unadulterated form to the public and to policy-makers.
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Is there a moral here for the economic analysis of evidence, inference, and proof? I think so.
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Law and Economics

It's almost enough to make me believe in law and economics:

Ethan Bronner, Law Schools’ Applications Fall as Costs Rise and Jobs Are Cut NYTimes (Jan. 31, 2013):

Law school applications are headed for a 30-year low, reflecting increased concern over soaring tuition, crushing student debt and diminishing prospects of lucrative employment upon graduation.

The New York Times

As of this month, there were 30,000 applicants to law schools for the fall, a 20 percent decrease from the same time last year and a 38 percent decline from 2010, according to the Law School Admission Council. Of some 200 law schools nationwide, only 4 have seen increases in applications this year. In 2004 there were 100,000 applicants to law schools; this year there are likely to be 54,000.

Death of Paul Rice

I deeply regret (and I am embarrassed) that I have been so out of touch that I did not know that Professor Paul Rice passed away last July. His Evidence casebook was marvelous and comprehensive. In the iteration of the casebook I knew, it covered common law evidence as well as evidence codifications. I marveled at his apparent ability to cover such a vast amount of material in his Evidence course.

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The "Human Brain Project"

The European Union has decided to invest in a big way in research on the human brain. See James Kanter, [Two] Science Projects [Each] to Receive Award of a Billion Euros, NYTimes (Jan. 28, 2013):

BRUSSELS — Projects to imitate the brain and to develop new materials for information technology have won awards of about 1 billion euros each that will be announced Monday by the European Commission.
The awards, the largest of their kind ever made by the European authorities and equivalent to about $1.35 billion each, are aimed at helping innovative industries in the European Union and nonmember countries like Switzerland.   [snip, snip]         

The Human Brain Project aims to create the most accurate simulation to date of the brain and its functions. The project could help aid diagnoses of diseases, help with the testing of new drugs, and develop supercomputing techniques modeled on the brain.

The project involves scientists from 87 institutions and will be led by Henry Markram, a professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. Partners in that project include the Institut Pasteur in France, I.B.M. in the United States and SAP in Germany.

        

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