Subjects:

Evidence

Contents:

Preface

1. Introduction: The story of a project

2. Taking facts seriously

3. The rationalist tradition of evidence scholarship

4. Some scepticism about some scepticisms

5. Identification and misidentification in legal processes: redefining the problem

6. What is the law of evidence?

7. Rethinking evidence

8. Legal reasoning and argumentation

9. Stories and argument

10. Lawyers' stories

11. Narrative and generalizations in argumentation about questions of fact

12. Reconstructing the truth about Edith Thompson: the Shakespearean and the Jurist (with R. Weis)

13. The ratio decidendi of the parable of the prodigal son

14. Taking facts seriously - again

15. Evidence as a multi-disciplinary subject.

Wildy's Book of the Month - June 2006
The Law of Evidence has traditionally been perceived as a dry, highly technical, and mysterious subject. This book argues that problems of evidence in law are closely related to the handling of evidence in other kinds of practical decision-making and other academic disciplines, that it is closely related to common sense and that it is an interesting, lively and accessible subject.

These essays develop a readable, coherent historical and theoretical perspective about problems of proof, evidence, and inferential reasoning in law. Although each essay is self-standing, they are woven together to present a sustained argument for a broad inter-disciplinary approach to evidence in litigation, in which the rules of evidence play a subordinate, though significant, role.

This revised and enlarged edition includes a revised introduction, the best-known essays in the first edition, and new chapters on narrative and argumentation, teaching evidence, and evidence as a multi-disciplinary subject.