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Theories of Truth in Legal Fact-Finding

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Theory of Legal Evidence - Evidence in Legal Theory

Part of the book series: Law and Philosophy Library ((LAPS,volume 138))

Abstract

Since the truth is always involved in determining the facts of a case, we as lawyers also need to ask a question, what it actually is to consider something true in a specific legal context. Simply, the truth is not legally described as something particular although we naturally want a court to decide on the ground of true facts. Once we know why the truth comes at the scene, we need to explore what it means—mostly in philosophy, and whether or how a judge could use this knowledge to issue a just decision based on a satisfying theoretical background.

This chapter was written with the support of the Charles University program SVV260494 “Integrating role of human rights in recent law”.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    James (1927).

  2. 2.

    Habermas (2003).

  3. 3.

    Tarski (1956).

  4. 4.

    Crivelli (2006), p. 130.

  5. 5.

    David (2016), available via https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/truth-correspondence/.

  6. 6.

    Aristotle (2003), p. 180.

  7. 7.

    Acquinas (2003).

  8. 8.

    Kolář (2002), p. 71.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., p. 73.

  10. 10.

    Russell (1991), pp. 72–73.

  11. 11.

    To prevent any ideas of the relativity of a conviction and difficulty of its determination (because truthfulness itself is a subject of exploring) consider for example physical laws. If a person is convinced that a thrown object does not fall down, we cannot talk about any correspondence, regardless of a person’s conviction.

  12. 12.

    Russell (1991), p. 75.

  13. 13.

    Russell (2009), pp. 128–129.

  14. 14.

    Russell (1991), p. 78.

  15. 15.

    Kirkham (1995), p. 77.

  16. 16.

    Kolář (2002), p. 71.

  17. 17.

    Kirkham (1995), p. 119.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., p. 124.

  19. 19.

    Austin (Urmson, Warnock eds) (1979), p. 125.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., p. 122.

  21. 21.

    Kolář (2002), p. 81.

  22. 22.

    Blanshard (1955), p. 261.

  23. 23.

    Ibid.

  24. 24.

    Kirkham (1995), p. 105.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., p. 104.

  26. 26.

    Blanshard (1955), p. 260.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., p. 264; see also Kirkham (1995), p. 104.

  28. 28.

    Kolář (2002), p. 86.

  29. 29.

    Kirkham (1995), p. 106.

  30. 30.

    Ibid.

  31. 31.

    Ibid., p. 111.

  32. 32.

    Dworkin (1991), p. 373.

  33. 33.

    Cited by Kirkham (1995), p. 111.

  34. 34.

    As an exception to the rule see Summers (2000), p. 285.

  35. 35.

    Rubeš (1970), p. 46.

  36. 36.

    Vyšinskij (1950), p. 238.

  37. 37.

    Rubeš (1970), p. 46.

  38. 38.

    Boura (1954), p. 79.

  39. 39.

    Idid.

  40. 40.

    Zoulík In: Frischmann et al. (1996), p. 38.

  41. 41.

    Winterová and Macková (2018), p. 80.

  42. 42.

    Ibid.; Knapp (1995), p. 217.

  43. 43.

    Štajgr (1954), p. 107.

  44. 44.

    Boura (1954), p. 75.

  45. 45.

    Cited by Macur (2001), p. 127.

  46. 46.

    See Holländer (2012), p. 269.

  47. 47.

    Macur (2001), p. 11.

  48. 48.

    Risinger (2013), p. 808.

  49. 49.

    Meant as truth in a strictly philosophical sense.

  50. 50.

    Nicolson (1994), p. 737.

  51. 51.

    Coleman (1997), p. 183; Ho (2008), p. 116.

  52. 52.

    Nicolson (1994), p. 732.

  53. 53.

    See Damaška (1998), p. 291.

  54. 54.

    See Šámal (2008), p. 349.

  55. 55.

    Searle (1995), pp. 200, 203.

  56. 56.

    See Dennis (2007), p. 49.

  57. 57.

    See Amaya (2013), p. 6.

  58. 58.

    Gerlich (1934), p. 15; Lavický (2017), pp. 93–94.

  59. 59.

    Thagard (1989), p. 459; Thagard (2002), p. 43.

  60. 60.

    In this case, I do not mean formalism as a formalistic application of law but only an approach to determine certain kinds of procedural rules.

  61. 61.

    Blanshard (1955), p. 261.

  62. 62.

    Kirkham, (1995), p. 105.

  63. 63.

    Macur (2001), p. 59.

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  1. Charles University, School of Law, Prague, Czech Republic

    Viktor Gazda

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  1. University of Passau, Passau, Germany

    Verena Klappstein

  2. Legal Theory and Philosophy, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

    Maciej Dybowski

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Gazda, V. (2021). Theories of Truth in Legal Fact-Finding. In: Klappstein, V., Dybowski, M. (eds) Theory of Legal Evidence - Evidence in Legal Theory. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 138. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83841-6_7

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