The Proof: Uses of Evidence in Law, Politics, and Everything Else

by Frederick Schauer

In a world awash in “fake news,” where public figures make unfounded assertions as a matter of course, a preeminent legal theorist ranges across the courtroom, the scientific laboratory, and the insights of philosophers to explore the nature of evidence and show how it is credibly established.

In the age of fake news, trust and truth are hard to come by. Blatantly and shamelessly, public figures deceive us by abusing what sounds like evidence. Preeminent legal theorist Frederick Schauer proposes correctives, drawing on centuries of inquiry into the nature of evidence.

Evidence is the basis of how we know what we think we know, but evidence is no simple thing. Evidence that counts in, say, the policymaking context is different from evidence that stands up in court. Law, science, historical scholarship, public and private decisionmaking―all rely on different standards of evidence. Exploring diverse terrain including vaccine and food safety, election-fraud claims, the January 2021 events at the US Capitol, the reliability of experts and eyewitnesses, climate science, art authentication, and even astrology, The Proof develops fresh insights into the challenge of reaching the truth.

Schauer combines perspectives from law, statistics, psychology, and the philosophy of science to evaluate how evidence should function in and out of court. He argues that evidence comes in degrees. Weak evidence is still some evidence. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but prolonged, fruitless efforts to substantiate a claim can go some distance in proving a negative. And evidence insufficient to lock someone up for a crime may be good enough to keep them out of jail. This book explains how to reason more effectively in everyday life, shows why people often reason poorly, and takes evidence as a pervasive problem, not just a matter of legal rules.

Genres: Law, Nonfiction, Politics, Psychology

298 pages, Hardcover

First published May 31, 2022

About the author

Frederick Franklin Schauer was an American legal scholar who served as David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He was also the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He was well known for his work on American constitutional law, free speech, and on legal reasoning, especially the nature and value of legal formalism.

Reviews

[Bharat Chugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that we absolutely need, though not necessarily a book that we deserve.

We live in a world that is increasingly surrendering itself to a mind-numbing state of a willing suspension of disbelief. Where what we believe in is not based on the purifying streams of evidence and proof, (or enough evidence - at any rate) - but just rumour, gossip, and hearsay.

Where we forget Carl Sagan’s admonishment that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.

Where we believe in things such as ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’ and go by uninformed intuition, gut, faith, and other forms of uncritical thinking and decision making patterns.

If you are a human being reading this, and want to think better, and make better decisions, read this now.

3 Million out of 5 for me!

[Suyogaya Awasthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure”.

As the human evolution progressed, we all moved forward and the most decisive factor behind our uplifting was our innate ability to make surmises and make conjectures which were most logically correct and accurate summed with the accuracy of perception through our senses. Since then, the rule of evidence has also evolved, however in modern times, deception has spread its wings and the accuracy of our surmises is getting derailed owing to the continuous propagation of false claims, however the same is to be seen a change through the 320 pages long book at hand. Delving further, the book has been further divided into 13 Chapters. The first chapter is titled “As a matter of fact” in which the author has verily stressed the aspect of “Facts” whose existence remains to be independent of any of our predispositions and predilections and the same is referenced with the death of Elvis Presley and further dwells into the existing plains of our reality. The next chapter titled “Zebras, Horses and the Nature of Inference” talks about the aspect of Inference and stresses the aspect of probability and the importance of inductive reasoning as well as deductive reasoning. As the chapters progress, each of them tends to follow a streamlined approach and much of it can be surmised through chapter titles such as Burden of Proof, How To Tell Truth With Statistics, etc.

The writing style can be considered as very analytical and simplistic with greater stress on offering practicable insights into things. Additionally, the overall content of the book makes it contemporaneous as well, thus making it a must-read for anyone willing to go for an insightful and eye-opening read.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brief interesting overview of the role of “evidence” in learning about factual matters. very readable, doesn’t at all get bogged down in jargon. I kind of wanted it to get a little more philosophical about epistemology etc but it mostly sticks to pretty practical matters, especially legal situations (the author is a law professor after all). Don’t ignore the footnotes, there is a lot of interesting stuff in there.

[Nick Ferraro · Rating 4 out of 5]

“All evidence, or at least almost all evidence, has this double aspect. It is typically based on other evidence, and it is also evidence of something else. When we say that an item of evidence is evidence of something, therefore, we need to bear in mind that the item of evidence is also the something that another piece of evidence is the evidence of.”

I hope I’m not the only one who has to read that twice ^^

A book about the differentiating standards of evidence, most commonly those used in the context of law, and how we weight the veracity of differing types of evidence. Particularly interesting was the way that different types of evidence overlap, and build into each other, as the quote above illustrates

“Linked to the question "For what?" is the question "Compared to what?" Not only do we need to know the purposes for which a piece of evidence is being put, or the hypotheses it is being used to test, before we know whether the evidence is relevant, whether we should consider it, and how much weight we should give it, but we also need to know what alternative evidence will be used if the evidence under consideration cannot be used. And that inquiry includes the possibility of "none."

At times a bit dry, but overall informative, this book is worth reading for those interested in epistemology and/or critical thinking.