Many epistemological terms, such as investigation, inquiry, argument, evidence, and fact were established in law well before being associated with science. However, while legal proof remained qualified by standards of ‘moral certainty’, scientific proof attained a reputation for objectivity. Although most forms of legal evidence continue to be treated as fallible ‘opinions’ rather than objective ‘facts’, forensic DNA evidence increasingly is being granted an exceptional factual status. It did not always enjoy such status. Two decades ago, the scientific status of (...) forensic DNA evidence was challenged in the scientific literature and in courts of law, but by the late 1990s it was being granted exceptional legal status. This paper reviews the ascendancy of DNA profiling, and argues that its widely-heralded objective status is bound up with systems of administrative accountability. The ‘administrative objectivity’ of DNA evidence rests upon observable and reportable bureaucratic rules, records, recording devices, protocols, and architectural arrangements. By highlighting administrative sources of objectivity, this paper suggests that DNA evidence remains bound within the context of ordinary organisational and practical routines, and is not a transcendent source of ‘truth’ in the criminal justice system. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that legal standards of proof are reducible to thresholds of probability. Many have rejected this thesis because it seems to entail that defendants can be found liable solely on the basis of statistical evidence. I argue that this inference is invalid. I do so by developing a view, called Legal Causalism, that combines Thomson's (1986) causal analysis of evidence with recent work in formal theories of causal inference. On this view, legal standards of proof can be (...) reduced to probabilities, but deriving these probabilities involves more than just statistics. (shrink)

Explanationist accounts of rational legal proof view trials as a competition between explanations. Such accounts are often criticized for being underdeveloped. One question in need of further attention is when guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal trials. This article defends an inference to the best explanation -based approach on which guilt is only established BARD if the best guilt explanation in a case is substantially more plausible than any innocence explanation, and there is no good reason to (...) presume that we have overlooked evidence or alternative explanations that could realistically have exonerated the defendant. This is a comparative account, which I argue is better suited for arriving at accurate verdicts than the non-comparative ‘no plausible alternative’ account that many explanationists tacitly assume. Furthermore, this account is not susceptible to the most important arguments against IBE in criminal trials or to arguments against other, non-explanationist interpretations of the BARD standard. I use a case study to illustrate how this account provides meaningful guidance for decision makers in criminal trials. (shrink)

In procedural-law scholarship as well as in the theoretical analysis of the notion of proof as a result of the joint assessment of all items of evidence introduced in a trial, reference is frequently made to notions such as the conviction, belief, or certainty of a judge or a jury member about what happened. All these notions underscore the mental states involved in the process of determining the facts on the part of a judge or a jury. In this analysis, (...) I look at the links between beliefs and the justification in the findings of fact provided by the judge or jury in her or its verdict. (shrink)