The primary aim of this paper is to defend the Lockean View—the view that a belief is epistemically justified iff it is highly probable—against a new family of objections. According to these ...objections, broadly speaking, the Lockean View ought to be abandoned because it is incompatible with, or difficult to square with, our judgments surrounding certain legal cases. I distinguish and explore three different versions of these objections—
The Conviction Argument
, the
Argument from Assertion and Practical Reasoning
, and the
Comparative Probabilities Argument
—but argue that none of them are successful. I also present some very general reasons for being pessimistic about the overall strategy of using legal considerations to evaluate epistemic theories; as we will see, there are good reasons to think that many of the considerations relevant to legal theorizing are ultimately irrelevant to epistemic theorizing.
This article examines the standard of proof for unlawful killing in coronial proceedings. Historically, the criminal standard of proof governed inquest findings of unlawful killing. In R (Maughan) v ...Her Majesty’s Senior Coroner for Oxfordshire, the Supreme Court resolved the important question of whether the criminal or civil standard governed inquest conclusions of unlawful killing. The court concluded that the correct standard of proof for all conclusions in coronial proceedings is the balance of probabilities. This article argues that whilst preserving differing standards of proof in coronial proceedings was no longer defensible and Maughan has provided welcome clarity, unanswered questions remain concerning the implementation of this fundamental change.
(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2023 8(1), 1-8 | European Forum Highlight of 28 March 2023 | (Abstract) When exactly can an impediment to effective ...competition be considered "significant" enough, if caused by a horizontal merger that gives rise to unilateral effects absent dominance, and what standard of proof does the Commission have to satisfy? Commission v CK Telecoms represents the first occasion for the European Court of Justice to elaborate on these questions. As the case is still pending, this Article discusses the significance of the latest legal guidance provided by the Opinion of Advocate General Kokott. This Article suggests that the Opinion is a return to well-established principles after the Court's judgment in Impala II, and provides a soundly reasoned critique of the decision of the General Court, directing special attention to the heightened standard of proof and the substantive criteria proposed for distinguishing significant from "insignificant" effects. Moreover, the Opinion contains a restatement of the doctrine of marginal review and thus constitutes an active effort to maintain the legal status quo.
Much has been written about the existence and formulation of different standards of proof, both in civil and criminal proceedings. However, one point on which it is worth deepening into is that of ...the normative anchor of those standards. The issue presents interesting and problematic trims while in the legislation the test standards are not always predetermined. The individualization and cognizability of the standard thus becomes a previous question on which it is necessary to reflect, before analyzing how a particular evidentiary standard is applied. The recognition of judicial standard before the jurisdictional decision favors legal certainty and allows the control of judicial decisions.
The case United States v. McClinton is discussed. The Seventh Circuit had to assess whether the district court erred in considering the murder of a co-conspirator as relevant conduct when sentencing ...the defendant for a robbery conviction, even though the jury had acquitted him of a charge related to the co-conspirator's death. The district court found that the defendant had killed his co-conspirator under a simple preponderance of the evidence standard. The Seventh Circuit affirmed this use of acquitted conduct. But this decision was not mandated by precedent, which has acknowledged that in extreme cases like McClinton, district courts may use a higher standard of proof for acquitted conduct.
Evidence law categorises convictions in purely binary terms, excluding the possibility of judgment of degree. The derivative allocation of punishment also assumes a similarly binary, ‘all or nothing’ ...structure: punishment can be calibrated, but not with the established probability of guilt. The article will use economic analysis to formulate the deterrence-based case for deserting this binary conceptualisation, in favour of a multiplicity of conviction categories. The discussion will be devoted both to the context of plea bargaining and to the realm of the criminal trial: with respect to plea bargaining, the article will present the economic case for converting the criminal standard of proof into a negotiable feature of trial. In the trial context, the article will make the deterrence-based argument for calibrating the size of the sanction with the level of proof, in a manner which accommodates a host of conviction categories. Using these examples and the tools of economic analysis, the article will demonstrate how a multiplicity of conviction categories and derivative distribution of punishment could allow for a better realisation of the deterrence goals underlying the criminal justice system.
The law requires criminal guilt to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. There are two different approaches to construing this legal rule. On an epistemic approach, the rule is construed in terms of ...justified belief or knowledge; on a probabilistic approach, the rule is construed in terms of satisfying a probabilistic threshold. An epistemic construction of the rule has this advantage over a probabilistic construction: the former can while the latter cannot excuse the state from blame for a false conviction. This claim rests on an understanding of legal rules, legal justification for a finding of guilt and the central purpose of a criminal trial.
This paper analyzes the way in which the EFSA has addressed the limitations that the essentiality of nutrients presents to the requirement of obtaining evidence from RCTs for the scientific ...substantiation of health claims. By redefining the requirements to affirm causality in the case of essentiality of nutrients, the EFSA has constrained the debate on the relevance of different methodologies in the field of nutrition research. However, avoiding this methodological debate does not settle the controversy as to whether the EFSA's evidentiary hierarchy is the best for both investigating causal relationships in nutrition and for achieving social objectives such as fostering innovation and public health.
Focusing on evidentiary approaches, this article examines the burdens and standards of proof applied at United Nations quasi-judicial international human rights bodies. These bodies have dual-faceted ...mandates, combining legal and human rights traditions and imperatives. However, they diverge in their approach to evidence. This article argues that the 'prima facie' approach developed over the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention's 30 years of jurisprudence provides an appropriately flexible and conceptually coherent means of accommodating combined human rights and the judicial mandates. Nonetheless, this approach requires lexiconic and taxonomical tightening, and clarification of its standard of proof. Comparing the approaches taken by other quasi-judicial bodies, this article builds the impetus towards inter-institutional consistency. It reviews proposals such as wholesale reversal of the burden of proof onto Governments. It highlights the drawbacks of that unilateral type of burden and the risks that it would introduce further uncertainty for parties to proceedings, may cause onerous difficulties for claimants, and would potentially flood the human rights institutions with unsubstantiated claims.
I discuss the knowledge account of legal proof in Moss (
2023
) and develop an alternative. The unifying thread throughout this article are reflections on the beyond reasonable doubt (BRD) standard ...of proof. In Section
1
, I will introduce the details of Moss’s account and how she motivates it via the BRD standard. In Section
2
, I will argue that there are important disanalogies between BRD and knowledge that undermine Moss’s argument. There is however another motivation for the knowledge account: combined with auxiliary claims, that is probabilistic knowledge and moral encroachment, it can provide a general solution to the puzzle of statistical evidence. Section
3
spells out the details. In Section
4
, I suggest to combine the knowledge account with pragmatic encroachment, instead of moral encroachment, in order to stay clear of the thorny issues whether corporations have moral rights. In Section
5
, I argue that the verdicts of Moss’s account in cases of false justified beliefs and non-luminous knowledge conflict with the BRD standard and thus call for abandoning the account. Based on the social function of the BRD standard, I suggest a replacement for the knowledge account that is also just as potent as a general solution for the puzzle of statistical evidence. While I will grant that knowledge is neither always necessary nor always sufficient for convictions, I will argue that the concept of knowledge nonetheless plays a significant and ineliminable role in legal decision-making.
PDF
