Evidence: Law and Context explains the key concepts of evidence law in England and Wales clearly and concisely, set against the backdrop of the broader political and theoretical contexts. The book focuses on the essential topics commonly found on Evidence courses, covering both criminal evidence and civil evidence. Taking a contextual approach, the authors show how wider policy debates and societal trends have impacted upon the recent evolution of the law, helping to explain how and why the law has developed. The sixth edition has been revised to include: the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the introduction of the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), and updates on previous statistics on the increase in the use of ‘show pleas,’ false confessions, and miscarriages of justice, alongside a comparative perspective on how the American criminal practice has evolved along a parallel line. Learning points summarise the major principles and rules covered and practical examples are used throughout the text to give better understanding as to how the technical rules are applied in practice. Self-test questions are included in the book, helping students to test their understanding and prepare for assessment. Well written, clear, and with a logical structure throughout, it contains all the information necessary for any undergraduate evidence law module.

Evidence: Law and Context explains the key concepts of evidence law in England and Wales clearly and concisely, set against the backdrop of the broader political and theoretical contexts. The book focuses on the essential topics commonly found on Evidence courses covering both criminal evidence and civil evidence. It takes a contextual approach discussing how wider policy debates and societal trends have impacted upon the recent evolution of the law in order to provide students with an explanation as to how and why the law has developed. The fifth edition has been revised to include: coverage of R v Hunter 2015 and its impact on good character evidence; developments in procedures relating to young and vulnerable witnesses; and more in-depth coverage of key cases. Learning points summarise the major principles and rules covered and practical examples are used throughout the text to give better understanding as to how the technical rules are applied in practice. Self-test questions are included in the book, helping students to test their understanding and prepare for assessment. Well written, clear and with a logical structure throughout, it contains all the information necessary for any undergraduate evidence law module.

Evidence in Context explains the key concepts of evidence law in England and Wales clearly and concisely, set against the backdrop of the broader political and theoretical contexts. The book helps to inform students of the major debates within the field, providing an explanation as to how and why the law has developed as it has. This fourth edition has been revised and expanded to include developments in the law of hearsay evidence as well as recent litigation surrounding witness anonymity orders, bad character and vulnerable witnesses. It also addresses the on-going controversy and debate about the use of expert witnesses. A brand new chapter considers the contentious issue of public interest immunity, and the introductory chapter has been substantially expanded to consider the continuing interplay between the UK courts and the European Court of Human Rights as the role of human rights in evidence becomes increasingly important. Features include: Key learning points to summarise the major principles of evidence law Practical examples to help students understand how the rules are applied in practice Self-test questions to encourage students to reflect on what they have learned A supporting companion website including answers to self-test questions Well-written, clear and with a logical structure throughout, Evidence in Context contains all the information necessary for any undergraduate evidence law module.

This book explains the key concepts of evidence law clearly and concisely, set against the backdrop of the broader political and theoretical contexts. It helps to inform students of the major debates within the field, providing an explanation as to how and why the law has developed as it has.

The dominant approach to evaluating the law on evidence and proof focuses on how the trial system should be structured to guard against error. This book argues instead that complex and intertwining moral and epistemic considerations come into view when departing from the standpoint of a detached observer and taking the perspective of the person responsible for making findings of fact. Ho contends that it is only by exploring the nature and content of deliberative responsibility that the role and purpose of much of the law can be fully understood. In many cases, values other than truth have to be respected, not simply as side-constraints, but as values which are internal to the nature and purpose of the trial. A party does not merely have a right that the substantive law be correctly applied to objectively true findings of fact, and a right to have the case tried under rationally structured rules. The party has, more broadly, a right to a just verdict, where justice must be understood to incorporate a moral evaluation of the process which led to the outcome. Ho argues that there is an important sense in which truth and justice are not opposing considerations; rather, principles of one kind reinforce demands of the other. This book argues that the court must not only find the truth to do justice, it must do justice in finding the truth.

"Philosophical Foundations of Evidence Law presents a cross-disciplinary overview of the core issues in the theory and methodology of adjudicative evidence and factfinding, assembling the major philosophical and interdisciplinary insights that define evidence theory, as related to law, in a single book. The volume presents contemporary debates on truth, knowledge, rational beliefs, proof, argumentation, explanation, coherence, probability, economics, psychology, bias, gender, and race. It covers different theoretical approaches to legal evidence, including the Bayesian approach, scenario theory, and inference to the best explanation. The volume’s contributions come from scholars spread across three continents and twelve different countries, whose common interest is evidence theory as related to law"-- from publisher's website.

Identifies and evaluates the psychological choices implicit in the rules of evidence Evidence law is meant to facilitate trials that are fair, accurate, and efficient, and that encourage and protect important societal values and relationships. In pursuit of these often-conflicting goals, common law judges and modern drafting committees have had to perform as amateur applied psychologists. Their task has required them to employ what they think they know about the ability and motivations of witnesses to perceive, store, and retrieve information; about the effects of the litigation process on testimony and other evidence; and about our capacity to comprehend and evaluate evidence. These are the same phenomena that cognitive and social psychologists systematically study. The rules of evidence have evolved to restrain lawyers from using the most robust weapons of influence, and to direct judges to exclude certain categories of information, limit it, or instruct juries on how to think about it. Evidence law regulates the form of questions lawyers may ask, filters expert testimony, requires witnesses to take oaths, and aims to give lawyers and factfinders the tools they need to assess witnesses’ reliability. But without a thorough grounding in psychology, is the “common sense” of the rulemakers as they create these rules always, or even usually, correct? And when it is not, how can the rules be fixed? Addressed to those in both law and psychology, The Psychological Foundations of Evidence Law draws on the best current psychological research-based knowledge to identify and evaluate the choices implicit in the rules of evidence, and to suggest alternatives that psychology reveals as better for accomplishing the law’s goals.

Teaching Evidence Law sets out the contemporary experiences of evidence teachers in a range of common law countries across four continents: Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. It addresses key themes and places these in the context of academic literature on the teaching of evidence, proof and fact-finding. This book focuses on the methods used to teach a mix of abstract and practical rules, as well as the underlying skills of fact-analysis, that students need to apply the law in practice, to research it in the future and to debate its appropriateness. The chapters describe innovative ways of overcoming the many challenges of this field, addressing the expanding fields of evidence law, how to reach and accommodate new audiences with an interest in evidence, and the tools devised to meet old and new pedagogical problems in this area. Part of Routledge’s series on Legal Pedagogy, this book will be of great interest to academics, post-graduate students, teachers and researchers of evidence law, as well as those with a wider interest in legal pedagogy or legal practice.

This book aims to honour the work of Professor Mirjan Damaška, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a prominent authority for many years in the fields of comparative law, procedural law, evidence, international criminal law and Continental legal history. Professor Damaška 's work is renowned for providing new frameworks for understanding different legal traditions. To celebrate the depth and richness of his work and discuss its implications for the future, the editors have brought together an impressive range of leading scholars from different jurisdictions in the fields of comparative and international law, evidence and criminal law and procedure. Using Professor Damaška's work as a backdrop, the essays make a substantial contribution to the development of comparative law, procedure and evidence. After an introduction by the editors and a tribute by Harold Koh, Dean of Yale Law School, the book is divided into four parts. The first part considers contemporary trends in national criminal procedure, examining cross-fertilisation and the extent to which these trends are resulting in converging practices across national jurisdictions. The second part explores the epistemological environment of rules of evidence and procedure. The third part analyses human rights standards and the phenomenon of hybridisation in transnational and international criminal law. The final part of the book assesses Professor Damaška 's contribution to comparative law and the challenges faced by comparative law in the twenty first century.

This book is a comprehensive, practice-oriented guide to the evidentiary regime under the 2015 World Anti-Doping Code (WADC) including the functioning of the Athlete Biological Passport. It is the first to show how the interplay between science and law affects the collection and evaluation of evidence in anti-doping, and how paradigm shifts in anti-doping strategies may modify evidentiary assumptions implicit to the WADC regime. Unique in its dealing with the subtleties of anti-doping science and legal implications, the book gives lawyers involved in anti-doping the keys to a better understanding of the science underlying the WADC regime, while providing anti-doping scientists with the first reference material to understand the legal framework in which their activities are embedded. The emphasis of the book is on international doping cases and it relies predominantly on CAS awards published up to Spring 2015. Written by an experienced Swiss lawyer it provides an insight into the Swiss legal system and its importance for the legal practice in doping matters. Marjolaine Viret is an attorney-at-law in Geneva, Switzerland, specialising in sports and health law. She has gained significant experience in sports arbitration as a senior associate in one of Switzerland’s leading law firms. She also holds positions within committees in sport, in particular as a member of the UCI Anti-Doping Commission. Ms Viret had her doctorate on anti-doping approved summa cum laude in 2015. She participates as a researcher in a project for a commentary of the 2015 WADC funded by the National Science Foundation and is regularly invited to lecture or speak in various fields of sports law. The book appears in the ASSER International Sports Law Series, under the editorship of Dr. Dave McArdle, Prof. Dr. Ben Van Rompuy and Marco A. van der harst LL.M.