Evidence

Key people

• John Henry WigmoreAmerican legal scholar (1863–1943)
• Alex SteinJustice of the Supreme Court of Israel
• Doron MenasheResearcher and lecturer in the Faculty of Law of the University of Haifa
• Gabriel HallevyFull Professor of Law

Read

• Summary of the law relative to pleading and evidence in criminal casesJohn Frederick Archbold · 1822Book
• Body of EvidencePatricia Cornwell · 1990Book
• In the Teeth of the EvidenceDorothy L. Sayers · 1939Book
• The Blind WatchmakerRichard Dawkins · 1986Book

Listen

• The Federal Rules of EvidenceJohnPodcast
• WTFRE: What the Federal (Rules of Evidence)‽Frylock IndustriesPodcast
• The EvidenceLCBC ChurchPodcast
• Admissible: Shreds of EvidenceVPM & Story MechanicsPodcast

By the numbers

• 27.2Women in parliament (%) — global, 2025 (World Bank)

Debates

• Should illegally obtained evidence be admissible in court?One view: Such evidence should be excluded to deter police misconduct and uphold constitutional rights. · Another: All reliable evidence should be admitted to ensure justice and find the truth, regardless of how it was obtained.Open question
• How much weight should be given to eyewitness testimony?One view: Eyewitness testimony is often unreliable due to memory fallibility and external influences. · Another: It is crucial direct evidence that often provides the most compelling account of events.Open question
• Should character evidence be admissible to prove a person acted in conformity with that character?One view: Character evidence can be highly prejudicial and distract from the specific facts of the case. · Another: A person's character can be relevant to understanding their actions and credibility.Open question

Glossary

• AdmissibilityWhether evidence can be presented in court, determined by legal rules.
• HearsayAn out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted, generally inadmissible.
• Burden of ProofThe legal obligation on a party to prove its case to a certain standard.
• RelevanceEvidence is relevant if it makes a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence.
• Expert WitnessA person with specialized knowledge who provides an opinion to assist the court.
• Circumstantial EvidenceIndirect evidence that implies a fact but does not directly prove it.

Careers

Roles this can lead toward

Threads 11

Where this connects to other fields — and why it's worth knowing.

• Narrative & Storytelling Literature

  Juries don't really add up cold odds and percentages; they pick whichever side told the story that hangs together best. That's a problem, because a smooth, believable tale can beat the messy, true one. In a courtroom, the better storyteller can sometimes outrun the actual facts.

• Philosophy of Science Philosophy

  Before a US jury hears an expert, the judge must first rule whether their method even counts as real science. That means a courtroom is quietly enforcing a philosophy idea: a claim is scientific only if it could be proven wrong. Philosopher Karl Popper's abstract theory became a hard legal test called the Daubert standard.

• Misinformation & Disinformation Media

  The scariest thing about deepfakes isn't the fakes, it's what they do to real evidence. Once everyone knows video can be faked, a guilty person caught on camera can just shrug and cry 'that's a deepfake.' It's called the 'liar's dividend,' and it poisons the whole idea of proof that courts and journalists depend on.

• News, Journalism & Verification Media

  Reporters and courtrooms are both truth-finding machines, and they run on shockingly similar rules: get two sources before you print it, put the burden of proof on the accuser, protect who told you what. A newsroom is basically running a mini justice system to figure out what really happened, just without a judge in a robe.

• The Scientific Method Science

  Both scientists and courtrooms face the same problem: witnesses lie, data misleads, evidence is shaky. But they solve it in opposite ways. Science makes everyone slowly agree through repeated testing; law throws two sides into combat and lets a jury pick the winner. Weirdly, the courtroom now borrows science's rulebook to decide which expert testimony even counts.

• Algorithms & Computation Mathematics

  Finding the culprit in a crime is brutally hard, but checking whether a given confession fits the evidence is easy. Justice quietly leans on that gap: verifying an answer is far simpler than discovering it. Computer science calls this the P-versus-NP asymmetry, the same reason we can catch fraud that we could never have predicted in advance.

• Deepfakes Media

  Deepfakes create a nasty bonus for liars: once any video could be faked, a guilty person can wave away real footage as 'fake'. So even genuine evidence starts losing its power in court. Truth gets easier to deny just because lies got easier to make.

• Photography Arts

  When photos first showed up in court, judges had to invent brand-new rules for proving a picture was genuine. So the camera didn't just capture crimes; it forced the law to rewrite what even counts as evidence.

• AI Governance Global Risks

  In court, you have the right to ask 'why?' and get reasons for a decision against you. But an AI can spit out a verdict with no explanation it can give. That breaks the basic tool courts use to keep power in check.

• AI in Medicine Health

  In court, a lawyer can grill a doctor: "Why did you decide that?" But an AI that spots a tumor can't explain its reasoning — it's a black box. That breaks a basic courtroom rule: evidence has to be able to explain itself.

• Disinformation and Elections Politics

  Courts figured out how to catch lying witnesses ages ago: strict rules about evidence and tough cross-examination. Elections have nothing like that, so wild claims fly around with no fact-check. Weirdly, a courtroom often gets closer to the truth than a public debate.