Richard W. Wright (Illinois Inst. Tech., Chicago-Kent College of Law) has posted Legal Proof: Warranted Degrees of Belief (Not Statistical/Mathematical Probability) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Considerable confusion exists, especially in common law jurisdictions, regarding the required standards of legal proof. In Evidence Matters, Susan Haack, focusing on legal doctrine and practice in the United States, explains that the confusion stems from a misunderstanding of the standards of proof as being based on probability in the sense of statistical frequency or mathematical probability, rather than probability in the historical sense of warranted degrees of belief. In this essay, I agree with and extend Haack’s arguments, adding references to legal doctrine and practice in other common law jurisdictions and also civil law jurisdictions. While I agree with her treating statistics on the occurrence of some event or state of affairs as relevant, but neither necessary nor sufficient, for proving a possibly applicable underlying general causal relationship, I disagree with her treating such statistics as relevant, apart from the general causation issue, in proving causation of a specific event or state of affairs.
Recommended.
