Sanchirico, Chris William --- "Evidence: Theoretical Models" [2012] ELECD 97; in Sanchirico, William Chris (ed), "Procedural Law and Economics" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Procedural Law and Economics

Editor(s): Sanchirico, William Chris

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847208248

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Evidence: Theoretical Models

Author(s): Sanchirico, Chris William

Number of pages: 68

Extract:

9 Evidence: theoretical models
Chris William Sanchirico


1. Introduction
Few legal disputes are solely a matter of how the law should be interpreted.
The parties to a legal dispute are rarely in complete agreement regarding
who did what, when, to whom, under what circumstances. Thus, courts ­
acting through professional judges or juries of citizens ­ routinely generate
"findings of fact," as opposed to "findings of law." Such factual determi-
nations are the subject of the field of law called "evidence."
The fundamental questions of legal evidence are these: First, how
do "fact finders" (judges or juries, as the case may be) make deduc-
tions about factual issues? Second, how should fact finders make such
deductions?
Legal scholars and social scientists have taken varying approaches to
these questions. This entry specifically concerns models of legal evidence,
where the word "model" is defined to encompass any approach explicitly
grounded in, and making abundant use of, mathematical reasoning. Most
of the entry concerns theoretical contributions, although occasional ref-
erence is made to pertinent empirical findings. Models of legal evidence
appear chiefly in three overlapping scholarly literatures: the legal literature
on evidence, the law and economics literature, and the economics litera-
ture on game theory and mechanism design.
Section 2 situates models of evidence within the larger context of models
of litigation. This discussion helps to clarify the boundaries of the entry. It
also explains why evidence models, which are far outnumbered by nonevi-
dentiary models of litigation, fill an important gap in the literature.
...