Rethinking Evidence
Exploratory Essays

Presents a sustained argument for a broad inter-disciplinary approach to evidence in litigation.

William Twining (Author)

9780521675376, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 1 June 2006

532 pages, 5 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 3 cm, 0.77 kg

' … Twining seems a born teacher. His texts are highly accessible although they deal with theories that are sometimes very complicated and abstract … [I]t is not only the language that makes the text so attractive and accessible, it is also the use of examples and smart, humorous petites histoires.' Professor Hans Nijboer, American Journal of Comparative Law

The Law of Evidence has traditionally been perceived as a dry, highly technical, and mysterious subject. This book argues that problems of evidence in law are closely related to the handling of evidence in other kinds of practical decision-making and other academic disciplines, that it is closely related to common sense and that it is an interesting, lively and accessible subject. These essays develop a readable, coherent historical and theoretical perspective about problems of proof, evidence, and inferential reasoning in law. Although each essay is self-standing, they are woven together to present a sustained argument for a broad inter-disciplinary approach to evidence in litigation, in which the rules of evidence play a subordinate, though significant, role. This revised and enlarged edition includes a revised introduction, the best-known essays in the first edition, and chapters on narrative and argumentation, teaching evidence, and evidence as a multi-disciplinary subject.

Preface
1. Introduction: The story of a project
2. Taking facts seriously
3. The rationalist tradition of evidence scholarship
4. Some scepticism about some scepticisms
5. Identification and misidentification in legal processes: redefining the problem
6. What is the law of evidence?
7. Rethinking evidence
8. Legal reasoning and argumentation
9. Stories and argument
10. Lawyers' stories
11. Narrative and generalizations in argumentation about questions of fact
12. Reconstructing the truth about Edith Thompson: the Shakespearean and the Jurist (with R. Weis)
13. The ratio decidendi of the parable of the prodigal son
14. Taking facts seriously - again
15. Evidence as a multi-disciplinary subject.

Subject Areas: Civil procedure: law of evidence [LNAC3], Legal history [LAZ], Jurisprudence & general issues [LA]