Legal proof and statistical conjunctions

Coherence, Evidence, and Legal Proof

A Formal Model of Legal Proof Standards and Burdens

This paper presents a formal model that enables us to define five distinct types of burden of proof in legal argumentation. Four standards of proof are shown to play a vital role in defining each type of burden. These standards of proof are defined in a precise way suitable for computing in argumentation studies generally, but are based on a long tradition of their use in law. The paper present...

On direct and indirect probabilistic reasoning in legal proof

In the academic literature three approaches to rational legal proof are investigated, broadly speaking based, respectively on Bayesian statistics, on scenario construction and on argumentation. In this paper these approaches are discussed in light of a distinction between direct and indirect probabilistic reasoning. Direct probabilistic reasoning directly reasons from evidence to hypotheses, wh...

Believing Conjunctions

I shall argue in this paper that it should.1 To begin with, I shall defend (CP) against several criticisms that have been launched against it. These criticisms are of two kinds, which I shall call internal and external respectively. Internal objections are that a theory that includes (CP) fails to give an account of what it is rational to believe that is satisfactory by its own standards. In pa...

Causality and Association: The Statistical and Legal Approaches

This paper discusses different needs and approaches to establishing “causation” that are relevant in legal cases involving statistical input based on epidemiological (or more generally observational or population-based) information. We distinguish between three versions of “cause”: the first involves negligence in providing or allowing exposure, the second involves “cause” as it is shown throug...