Rules of Evidence

This post was part of a discussion of critical thinking methods.

Before we entirely leave the topic of critical thinking methods, I wanted to mention rules of evidence. We have kind of focused on law creation in the common law system. However, the one of the more important point from a critical thinking perspective has to do with the reliability of information. We do not want to simply dump in everything, relevant and irrelevant, reliable and unreliable. The Federal Rules of Evidence are the set of rules that attempt to do this in our Federal Courts.

For example, we have all heard about "hearsay." The general rule (there are many exceptions) prohibits hearsay from being admitted into evidence. Hearsay is an out of court statement which is being presented as proof of the matter asserted. We prohibit hearsay, because it tends to be unreliable.

Here is an example. Jim testifies that Jill told him that David stole the car. If the purpose of the testimony is simply that Jill told that to Jim, there is no problem. However, if the purpose is to prove that David stole the car, it is pretty unreliable stuff. It would be much better to have Jill in court testifying under oath about David stealing the car and thus being able to clarify what she meant and subject her to cross examination of the topic. Otherwise, we basically have Jill testifying indirectly through Jim with no ability to test the truthfulness of her assertion that David stole the car.

This is just one example of how our legal system attempts to use a method for critical thinking to try to ensure that the truth is found and the results are correct. In the old days, before the development of such methods, we would toss women into lakes to determine if they were witches (I can never remember if floating meant you were a witch or were not a witch). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_ordeal With all its flaws, the current system does a better job of getting to the truth.

Article on the Federal Rules of Evidence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Rules_of_Evidence

Complete Text of the Federal Rules of Evidence

http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/index.html

		May 29, 2007 *Rules of Evidence or Trial by Ordeal*
	This post was part of a discussion of critical thinking methods. Before we entirely leave the topic of critical thinking methods, I wanted to mention rules of evidence. We have kind of focused on law creation in the common law system. However, the one of the more important point from a critical thinking perspective has to do with the reliability of information. We do not want to simply dump in everything, relevant and irrelevant, reliable and unreliable. The Federal Rules of Evidence are the set of rules that attempt to do this in our Federal Courts. For example, we have all heard about "hearsay." The general rule (there are many exceptions) prohibits hearsay from being admitted into evidence. Hearsay is an out of court statement which is being presented as proof of the matter asserted. We prohibit hearsay, because it tends to be unreliable. Here is an example. Jim testifies that Jill told him that David stole the car. If the purpose of the testimony is simply that Jill told that to Jim, there is no problem. However, if the purpose is to prove that David stole the car, it is pretty unreliable stuff. It would be much better to have Jill in court testifying under oath about David stealing the car and thus being able to clarify what she meant and subject her to cross examination of the topic. Otherwise, we basically have Jill testifying indirectly through Jim with no ability to test the truthfulness of her assertion that David stole the car. This is just one example of how our legal system attempts to use a method for critical thinking to try to ensure that the truth is found and the results are correct. In the old days, before the development of such methods, we would toss women into lakes to determine if they were witches (I can never remember if floating meant you were a witch or were not a witch). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_ordeal With all its flaws, the current system does a better job of getting to the truth. Article on the Federal Rules of Evidence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Rules_of_Evidence Complete Text of the Federal Rules of Evidence http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/index.html