[PDF] Of Doubt And Proof eBook

Author : Daniela Berti
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 16,52 MB
Release : 2016-03-03
Category : Law
ISBN : 1317086163

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All institutions concerned with the process of judging - whether it be deciding between alternative courses of action, determining a judge’s professional integrity, assigning culpability for an alleged crime, or ruling on the credibility of an asylum claimant - are necessarily directly concerned with the question of doubt. By putting ritual and judicial settings into comparative perspective, in contexts as diverse as Indian and Taiwanese divination and international cricket, as well as legal processes in France, the UK, India, Denmark, and Ghana, this book offers a comprehensive and novel perspective on techniques for casting and dispelling doubt, and the roles they play in achieving verdicts or decisions that appear both valid and just. Broadening the theoretical understandings of the social role of doubt, both in social science and in law, the authors present these understandings in ways that not only contribute to academic knowledge but are also useful to professionals and other participants engaged in the process of judging. This collection will consequently be of great interest to academics researching in the fields of legal anthropology, ritual studies, legal sociology, criminology, and socio-legal studies.

Author : James Q. Whitman
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 11,58 MB
Release : 2008-01-01
Category : Law
ISBN : 0300116004

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To be convicted of a crime in the United States, a person must be proven guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But what is reasonable doubt? Even sophisticated legal experts find this fundamental doctrine difficult to explain. In this accessible book, James Q. Whitman digs deep into the history of the law and discovers that we have lost sight of the original purpose of “reasonable doubt.” It was not originally a legal rule at all, he shows, but a theological one. The rule as we understand it today is intended to protect the accused. But Whitman traces its history back through centuries of Christian theology and common-law history to reveal that the original concern was to protect the souls of jurors. In Christian tradition, a person who experienced doubt yet convicted an innocent defendant was guilty of a mortal sin. Jurors fearful for their own souls were reassured that they were safe, as long as their doubts were not “reasonable.” Today, the old rule of reasonable doubt survives, but it has been turned to different purposes. The result is confusion for jurors, and a serious moral challenge for our system of justice.

Author : Genia Schönbaumsfeld
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 178 pages
File Size : 32,46 MB
Release : 2016
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0198783949

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The Illusion of Doubt confronts one of the most important questions in philosophy: what can we know? The radical sceptic's answer is 'not very much' if we cannot prove that we are not subject to (permanent) deception. This book shows that the radical sceptical problem is an illusion created by a mistaken picture of our evidential situation.

Author : Dan Simon
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 40,19 MB
Release : 2012-06-30
Category : Law
ISBN : 0674065115

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Criminal justice is unavoidably human. Detectives, witnesses, suspects, and victims shape investigations; prosecutors, defense attorneys, jurors, and judges affect the outcome of adjudication. Simon shows how flawed investigations produce erroneous evidence and why well-meaning juries send innocent people to prison and set the guilty free.

Author : Scott Turow
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 640 pages
File Size : 11,50 MB
Release : 2009-12-28
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1429957751

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In The Burden of Proof, Scott Turow probes the fascinating and complex character of Alejandro Stern as he tries to uncover the truth about his wife's life. Late one spring afternoon, Alejandro Stern, the brilliant defense lawyer from Presumed Innocent, comes home from a business trip to find that Clara, his wife of thirty years, has committed suicide.

Author : Susanna Egan
Publisher : Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 26,54 MB
Release : 2011-04-20
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1554583691

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Autobiographical impostures, once they come to light, appear to us as outrageous, scandalous. They confuse lived and textual identity (the person in the world and the character in the text) and call into question what we believe, what we doubt, and how we receive information. In the process, they tell us a lot about cultural norms and anxieties. Burdens of Proof: Faith, Doubt, and Identity in Autobiography examines a broad range of impostures in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and asks about each one: Why this particular imposture? Why here and now? Susanna Egan’s historical survey of texts from early Christendom to the nineteenth century provides an understanding of the author in relation to the text and shows how plagiarism and other false claims have not always been regarded as the frauds we consider them today. She then explores the role of the media in the creation of much contemporary imposture, examining in particular the cases of Jumana Hanna, Norma Khouri, and James Frey. The book also addresses ethnic imposture, deliberate fictions, plagiarism, and ghostwriting, all of which raise moral, legal, historical, and cultural issues. Egan concludes the volume with an examination of how historiography and law failed to support the identities of European Jews during World War II, creating sufficient instability in Jewish identity and doubt about Jewish wartime experience that the impostor could step in. This textual erasure of the Jews of Europe and the refashioning of their experiences in fraudulent texts are examples of imposture as an outcrop of extreme identity crisis. The first to examine these issues in North America and Europe, Burdens of Proof will be of interest to scholars of life writing and cultural studies.

Author : Larry Laudan
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 235 pages
File Size : 46,9 MB
Release : 2006-06-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 113945708X

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Beginning with the premise that the principal function of a criminal trial is to find out the truth about a crime, Larry Laudan examines the rules of evidence and procedure that would be appropriate if the discovery of the truth were, as higher courts routinely claim, the overriding aim of the criminal justice system. Laudan mounts a systematic critique of existing rules and procedures that are obstacles to that quest. He also examines issues of error distribution by offering the first integrated analysis of the various mechanisms - the standard of proof, the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof - for implementing society's view about the relative importance of the errors that can occur in a trial.