The plain truth about legal truth
2003; Wiley; Volume: 26; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0193-4872
Autores Tópico(s)Legal Systems and Judicial Processes
ResumoI. INTRODUCTION II. WHY WE SHOULD CARE ABOUT ISSUES CONCERNING THE TRUTH OF SINGULAR LEGAL PROPOSITIONS III. SKEPTICISM ABOUT TRUTH IN LAW: ITS CAUSE AND CURE A. Three Pseudo-Skepticisms About Truth of Singular Legal Propositions B. Five More Genuine Skepticisms About Truth of Singular Legal Propositions IV. REALISM VERSUS CONSTRUCTIVISM AS TO THE NATURE OF LEGAL TRUTH A. Two Theories of Truth Restated B. Three Arguments About Legal Truth V. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION In one of his ballads country/western singer Johnny Cash croons, The lonely voice of youth cries 'what is truth?' (1) In this first and most general panel, we are bid to confront a variation of youth's general question and implications of various answers to it. Such is ...? questions are notoriously fuzzy in answers they invite. For example, Erich Segal's answer to question, is love?: never having to say you're sorry. (2) Before launching into defense of some answer to such questions, we ought to pay attention to question itself. As H.L.A. Hart noted in introductory chapter of Concept of Law, (3) first thing to do with questions such as, is law? (or is truth?) is to get clear what question is asking. In this introductory section shall offer three clarifications of question about truth's nature. First, wish to put aside normative issue that will no doubt dominate discussions in later panels. This is issue of extent to which legal decision-makers (judge or juries) should seek to find the in disputed legal cases. For example, other normative desiderata such as efficiency in adjudication, protection of various relationships in privilege doctrines of evidence law, and restraints on police behavior by exclusionary rules are plainly competitors with factual truth-seeking as goal of legal dispute resolution. Ours, however, is a distinct and prior question: can legal decision-makers meaningfully be enjoined to seek truth? What is it that such injunctions command judges and jurors to find if they are enjoined to find truth? Do such truths of law and of legally relevant fact exist to be found? My second clarification has to do with bearers of truths in law cases: what is properly said to be true or false? We should not be concerned here with philosophical conundrums about nature of truth bearers (the candidates being beliefs, sentences, statements, assertions, propositions, and like). (4) We should simply stipulate a concern with propositions as truth bearers, and move on. Rather, main item to clarify here is kinds of propositions whose truth or falsity is of interest to lawyers. Consider following five possibilities: (5) (1) Factual propositions. In recent film, A Few Good Men, a lawyer tells a witness I want truth, whereupon witness responds, you can't handle truth. (6) characters are referring to truths of certain propositions of fact relevant to case. These are probably most obvious kinds of statements whose truth or falsity is of interest to lawyers. (2) General legal propositions. Equally as involved in decisions of disputed legal cases as propositions of fact, are general propositions of law. A general proposition of law is one contained in a universally quantified statement such as, all non-holographic wills require two witnesses in order to be valid. (3) Interpretive propositions. Because general propositions of law are about a general class of cases but no one particular case, we need interpretive premises in order to connect particular facts of a given case to general propositions of law. Such premises connect factual predicates to legal ones, so that one can connect, for example, factual propositions about written name of a particular person on a particular document, to legal propositions about subscriptions, signatures, witnesses, and valid wills. …
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