We argue that the common law standard of proof, given the rules of evidence, does not minimize expected error as usually argued in the legal literature, but may well be efficient from the standpoint ...of providing maximal incentives for socially desirable behavior. By contrast, civil law's higher but somewhat imprecise standard may be interpreted as reflecting a tradeoff between providing incentives and avoiding judicial error per se. In our model, the optimal judicial system has rules resembling those in the common law when providing incentives is paramount. When greater weight is given to avoiding error, the optimal system has civilian features. Nous argumentons que le standard de preuve en common law, compte tenu des contraintes de recevabilité en matière de preuve, n'a pas pour effet de minimiser l'erreur attendue comme le soutient la littérature juridique, mais qu'il peut être efficient d'un point de vue incitatif. Par comparaison, le standard de preuve plus fort mais imprécis des pays de droit codifié peut s'interpréter comme résultant d'un arbitrage entre minimisation des erreurs et effets incitatifs. Dans notre modèle, le système légal optimal a des règles ressemblant à celle de la common law quand les préoccupations incitatives sont primordiales. Lorsqu'une plus grande importance est attachée à l'élimination des erreurs de justice, le système optimal a des caractéristiques proches des systèmes de droit codifié.
I examine the case where fulfillment of a contractual commitment is only imperfectly verifiable and ask whether the court should then "tell the truth" regarding the action in dispute. I show that ...truth seeking does not maximize the expected surplus from contractual relationships. From the parties' viewpoint, the enforcer should disregard some of the available information and should sometimes rule in favor of one party, even though his understanding is that the other party is most probably right. The analysis provides a justification for rules of evidence in common law and for the use by courts of neutral normative priors regarding contending claims. J'analyse le cas où la réalisation d'un engagement contractuel n'est qu'imparfaitement vérifiable. La question posée est de savoir si le tribunal doit alors « dire le vrai » quant aux actions faisant l'objet d'un litige. Je montre que, du point de vue des contractants, la cour devrait faire abstraction d'une partie de l'information disponible et qu'elle devrait parfois statuer en faveur d'un des contractants, même si elle considère plus probable que l'autre ait raison. Cette analyse fournit une justification à certaines règles de procédure en droit civil et elle justifie le recours à des a priori normatifs neutres dans le règlement des différends.
In discussions of standards of proof, a familiar perspective often emerges. According to what we call specificationism, standards of proof are legal rules that specify the quantum of evidence ...required to determine that a litigant's claim has been proven. In so doing, they allocate the risk of error among litigants (and potential litigants), minimizing the risk of certain types of error. Specificationism is meant as a description of the way the rules actually function. We argue, however, that its claims are either mistaken or at a minimum deeply misleading, especially when it comes to standard of proof rules (SPRs) that contain indeterminate formulas, as is typical. As against specificationism, we argue that SPRs are best understood as rules that confer competence to decide whether a given standard has been met-according to whatever vague or inchoate interpretation (if any) of the rule in question triers of fact implicitly or explicitly employ. We call this the competence-norm approach.
This work analyzes the indictment decision carried out in the first stage of the jury procedure. The indictment decision acts as a procedural filter reducing the risk of wrongful convictions by the ...jury. Through bibliographic review, the work will address the problem of how this expected function can be fully achieved. In order to perform substantially, it is necessary to properly understand the legal requirements of the indictment decision and to adopt certain effectiveness criteria, such as the adversarial principle, immediacy and the support in the concept of standards of proof.
Standards of proof for attributing real world events/damage to global warming should be the same as in clinical or environmental lawsuits, argue Lloyd et al. The central question that we raise is ...effective communication. How can climate scientists best and effectively communicate their findings to crucial non-expert audiences, including public policy makers and civil society? To address this question, we look at the mismatch between what courts require and what climate scientists are setting as a bar of proof. Our first point is that scientists typically demand too much of themselves in terms of evidence, in comparison with the level of evidence required in a legal, regulatory, or public policy context. Our second point is to recommend that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommend more prominently the use of the category “more likely than not” as a level of proof in their reports, as this corresponds to the standard of proof most frequently required in civil court rooms. This has also implications for public policy and the public communication of climate evidence.
The burden of proof, a notion specific to the medieval Roman-canonical process but alien to the four Roman procedural systems, ought to have become obsolete with the introduction of the free ...assessment of evidence. However, doctrinal and jurisprudential inertia in the use of traditional concepts, as well as the conservation of biphasic processes in legal systems of Anglo-Saxon origin, including the Roman-canonical process, have favoured the persistence of a notion that, when observed objectively, has ceased to have any legitimate practical value in current judicial processes.
The Article addresses three main questions. First: Why do some scholars and decision-makers take evidence assessment criteria as standards of proof and vice versa? The answer comes from the fact that ...some legal systems are more concerned with assessment criteria and others with standards; therefore jurists educated in different contexts tend to emphasize what they are more familiar with, and to assimilate to it what they are less familiar with. Second: Why do systems differ in those respects? Here the answer stems from the historical, institutional and procedural differences that explain why some systems are more concerned with assessment criteria and others with standards of proof. And third, assuming that both criteria and standards are necessary to legal decision-making about facts: How can a system work if it neglects one of these things? Here the Article argues that there is a functional connection between criteria and standards. The functional connection account is distinguished from a functional equivalence account, and some systems and jurisdictions are referred to in greater detail to support the functional connection claim.
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