Justice, Truth, and Proof: Not So Simple, After All
La 贵补肠耻濒迟茅 de droit et le d茅partement de philosophie accueillent听Susan Haack, professeure de philosophie et de droit 脿 l'Universit茅 de Miami, pour un Atelier de th茅orie du droit.
搁茅蝉耻尘茅
[En anglais seulement] Jeremy Bentham writes of 鈥淚njustice, and her handmaid, Falsehood鈥�; and the metaphor rings true. Substantive justice is possible only if there is such a thing as factual truth; if such truth is objective, not simply a matter of what anyone, or everyone, believes; and if it is often enough possible for us to figure out what the truth of a disputed matter of fact is. This last point in turn requires that there be objective standards of better and worse evidence; and that the fact that the evidence with respect to a claim is, by these standards, good be at least a fallible indication of the likely truth of the claim in question. Unless these presuppositions are true, the whole idea of legal proof-procedures would be a kind of cruel farce. Even if these assumptions are true, however, if legal proof-procedures are to be more than judicial theater they need to be capable of arriving, often enough, at factually correct verdicts.
In the first part of her lecture, Prof. Haack argues that these presuppositions are indeed true; in the second part, however, as she explores the competence of common-law evidentiary procedures to produce true verdicts and briefly contrasts them with civil-law procedures, she expresses doubt that, in practice, they succeed as often as we would like.
La conf茅renci猫re
[En anglais seulement] Susan Haack (B.A., M.A., B.Phil., Oxford; Ph.D., Cambridge) is Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Law at the University of Miami. She teaches both in the College of Arts and Sciences and in the School of Law.
Her work ranges from philosophy of logic and language, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, Pragmatism鈥攂oth philosophical and legal鈥攁nd the law of evidence, especially scientific evidence, to social philosophy, feminism, and philosophy of literature.
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