We found a match
Your institution may have rights to this item. Sign in to continue.
- Title
An epistemological analysis of the use of reputation as evidence.
- Authors
Páez, Andrés
- Abstract
Rules 405(a) and 608(a) of the Federal Rules of Evidence allow the use of testimony about a witness's reputation to support or undermine his or her credibility in trial. This paper analyses the evidential weight of such testimony from the point of view of social epistemology and the theory of social networks. Together they provide the necessary elements to analyse how reputation is understood in this case, and to assess the epistemic foundation of a reputational attribution. The result of the analysis will be that reputational testimony is extremely weak from an epistemological point of view, and that in many cases there are more reliable substitutes that achieve a similar purpose. The obvious fix, in my view, is to eliminate the use of reputation testimony to support or undermine the credibility, honesty, chastity or peacefulness of a witness
- Subjects
LEGAL evidence; FEDERAL Rules of Evidence (U.S.); CIVIL trials
- Publication
International Journal of Evidence & Proof, 2021, Vol 25, Issue 3, p200
- ISSN
1365-7127
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/13657127211011219