Interdisciplinary Trends in Evidence Scholarship

Abstract

In recent decades, evidence law scholarship has taken on what appears to be a permanent interdisciplinary aspect. Doctrinal scholarship on evidence is in steep decline, having been replaced by inquiries of other kinds. In pondering the wisdom and purpose of evidence doctrine, and in formulating rules, jurists and scholars have, no doubt, always thought about background facts and theories which today, certainly, can be recognized as falling within the domains of fields outside of law. In recent times the links to those other fields have become more explicit and more numerous. We discuss where these connections have come from and suggest where they might be headed.

In this article we review five of those interdisciplinary junctions. Three of them seem to be established, enduring intersections of evidence scholarship and other fields: psychology (Part I), forensic science (and perhaps science more generally) (Part II), and the "new evidence scholarship" (the application of formal understandings of probability and proof) (Part III). And we look at two important newcomers to the world of interdisciplinary evidence scholarship: feminist studies (Part IV) and economics (Part V).