This paper explores two persistent questions in the literature on presumptions: the place and the nature of presumptions in law and legal argumentation. These questions were originally raised by James Bradley Thayer, one of the masters of the Law of Evidence and the author of the classic chapter devoted this subject in A preliminary treatise on Evidence. Like Thayer, I believe that these questions deserve attention. First the paper shows that the connection between presumptions and argumentation is a constant feature (...) in the literature on presumptions, since its foundation in the Middle Ages to modern times. James Bradley Thayer was probably the last jurist who clearly saw that presumptions belong to argumentation. Second, the paper examines two sources of controversy in the language of presumptions. First, “presumption” is an ambiguous word in the legal discourse. As a result, it is almost impossible to provide a clear and succinct answer to the question “What is a presumption?”. Second, there are at least four reconstructions of the concept of presumption whose merits and shortcomings are relevant to explore. The analysis presented here may be of interest for legal and non-legal scholars and, hopefully, it may help to shed light on the possibilities and limits of an interdisciplinary dialogue about presumptions. (shrink)

En los últimos años, ha habido un creciente interés en analizar los problemas relativos a la epistemología de la prueba jurídica. En distintas culturas jurídicas, las cuestiones de prueba y razonamiento acerca de los hechos han sido abordadas desde diversas perspectivas. La cultura jurídica latinoamericana no es, en este sentido, una excepción: hay actualmente un vigoroso grupo de juristas en la región que se ha ocupado de estudiar problemas relativos a los procesos probatorios en el Derecho...