Burden of Proof Rules, Findings and Explanations

Borhanian, Shahin (보해니안)

Burden of Proof Rules, Findings and Explanations

Legal Theory & Practice Review
Abbr : LTPR
2018, 6(3), pp.49-84
Publisher : The Korea Society for Legal Theory and Practice Inc.
Research Area : Social Science > Law

Borhanian, Shahin ¹

¹조선대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

Absolute conviction in the re-creation of facts at a trial ex-post and ex-situ is impossible and there is always a level of uncertainty. In the United States evidentiary and constitutional requirements establish several standards of proof to assist decision makers at trial to reach a conclusion when the evidence is uncertain, which correspond to three decisive levels of certainty, depending upon the particular categories of litigation in which they are applied, to ascertain either what “(a) probably has happened, or (b) what highly probably has happened, or (c) what almost certainly has happened.” The policies that commonly justify reliance on the burden of proof rules are functionally to (1) reduce the total risk of errors or particular types of errors and (2) properly allocate any remaining risk of errors among the parties. The common-law burden of proof rules as presently applied and interpreted fail to ensure decisions that uphold, standardize and balance the worthy policies of accuracy and fairness, which is particularly troublesome with respect to heightened burden of proof in criminal trials when life and liberty interests are at risk, and the intermediate burden of proof is implicated, such when civil fraud is alleged. A promising suggestion by Michael S. Pardo is that fact finders’ decisions on the probabilities be guided by second-order explanatory rules that reverse the inferential process, calling for decision makers to infer conclusions based on how well each proposition, if true, would explain the evidence.

KEYWORDS

Burden of Proof, Preponderance of the Evidence, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Clear and Convincing Evidence, Burden of Persuasion, Burden of Production, Tactical Burden

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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