Introduction

Epistemology and the philosophy of law are both thriving, but it is unfortunate that there is so little interaction between the two. Few books on epistemology deal with legal evidence, and few books on the legal system’s approach to evidence even recognize the sphere of philosophical epistemology. Law is not listed in the index to the admirable Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, and its entry on evidence moves on quickly after distinguishing what epistemologists and lawyers mean by evidence. The Oxford Handbook on Epistemology also has no index entry on law and only one short discussion of how psychology has affected evidence law. Perhaps more surprisingly, the Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law has 1,050 pages with no article or even entry in its index on evidence and only two pages that refer to epistemology. The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory does have one short article on evidence, but only one mention of epistemology or evidence outside of that article.

This neglect is a shame. Epistemologists constantly deploy concepts that courts and legal scholars have grappled with for centuries, so it would not be at all surprising if epistemologists could learn from lawyers and from the principles that have developed from hundreds of years of examples, decisions, and commentary. For example, many arguments in philosophy and elsewhere depend on saddling opponents with some burden of proof, and nobody has delved more deeply than lawyers and judges into questions about kinds and allocation of burdens of proofs. Again, causal and probabilistic theories of knowledge could learn much from discussions of probability in the law of evidence, whether those discussions be in the academic literature or, more rarely, in the reported opinions of judges.

On the other hand, legal scholars have just as much to learn from epistemologists. Evidence law is filled with puzzles, many of which resemble the philosophical puzzles that epistemologists have pondered throughout the ages. The law often refers, for example, to a “reasonable person” without considering the implications of alternative theories of rationality and reason that philosophers have developed. And if the jury in a criminal case is expected not to convict anyone whom they do not know to be guilty, then philosophical theories of knowledge might seem a natural place to look for applicable insights. Similarly, an increasing proportion of the law of evidence is focused on the use and misuse of experts, but too little of evidence law’s treatment of expertise is informed by philosophical discussions of the relationship among knowledge, authority, and trust.

To stimulate such exchanges, we organized a conference that would bring together philosophers and legal scholars working on evidence. The papers in this special issue are revised versions of the talks given on that occasion. Each paper has its own abstract so we will not summarize them again here. You can see for yourself that the resulting papers are diverse, stimulating, original, and profound.

The conference and these papers would not have been possible without generous support from Alvin Goldman and Episteme as well as several institutions at Dartmouth College, including a Reiss Family Faculty Research Grant from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences, the Dickey Center for International Understanding, the Law and the Liberal Arts Speaker Series, and the Philosophy Department.We are very grateful to all of these supporters as well as to our excellent contributors.