French judges’ evidential reasoning. An epistemological approach
Le raisonnement probatoire des juges en France. Une approche épistémologique
Résumé
Proof, doubt and the fear of miscarriages of justice are at the heart of the popular imagery of
trials, which features judges and juries trying to assemble the pieces of a veritable jigsaw puzzle to arrive at the truth. Finding the facts before any legal qualification seems paramount since a
decision based on factual errors cannot be right. However, the way in which judges must form
their opinions on questions of fact is a topic remarkably absent from French law (both positive
law and legal scholarship). A blind spot in the law, judges’ reasoning on facts and evidence has
not been the subject of in-depth epistemological analysis either. Although the norms of correct
reasoning are a privileged subject for philosophy, they are generally studied with reference to
logic and the scientific method. This book, at the crossroads of epistemology and legal
scholarship, aims to fill this double gap between law and philosophy, by proposing a philosophy
of evidential reasoning rooted in a critical reading of French law and fed by a comparative
approach.
Origine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
---|