Naturalized Epistemology and the Law of Evidence Revisited

37 Pages Posted: 3 Jun 2020 Last revised: 12 Jun 2020

Date Written: May 26, 2020

Abstract

This article revisits Naturalized Epistemology and the Law of Evidence, published twenty years ago. The evolution of the relative plausibility theory of juridical proof is offered as evidence of the advantage of a naturalized approach to the study of the field and law evidence. Various alternative explanations of juridical proof from other disciplines are examined and their shortcomings described. These competing explanations are similar in their reductive, a priori approaches that are at odds with an empirically oriented naturalized approach. The shortcomings of the various a priori approaches are driven by their common methodological commitments to employing weird hypotheticals to engage in intuition mining about the American legal systems that in turn ignore important aspects of the actual legal systems and consistently make impossible epistemological demands. As a result, both their descriptions of and prescriptions for American legal systems are implausible, unlike the relative plausibility theory.

Keywords: Naturalized Epistemology, Juridical Proof, Jurisprudence, Evidence, Knowledge, Probability, Relative Plausibility

Suggested Citation

Allen, Ronald J., Naturalized Epistemology and the Law of Evidence Revisited (May 26, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3610994 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3610994

Ronald J. Allen (Contact Author)

Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law ( email )

375 E. Chicago Ave
Chicago, IL 60611
United States
312-503-8372 (Phone)
312-503-2035 (Fax)

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