Chapter 5: Law, Fact and Language Flashcards
What is a ‘question of fact’?
all questions which attempt to prove the facts of what happened to create a dispute
What is a ‘question of law’?
issues that arise in connection with legal principles that may be argued in a case. eg whether borrowing an article may, in some circumstances, fall within the legal concept we call ‘theft’
In many criminal and virtually all civil cases, who acts as the tribunal of fact?
the judge
What are the basic evidentiary requirements for proof of a fact?
that it is ‘relevant and admissible’, and that the evidence is sufficiently strong to satisfy the ‘burden of proof’
How can a fact be ‘relevant’?
if it enables the court to reach a conclusion on any of the issues before it
What does ‘admissibility’ mean in the context of facts?
‘admissibility’ is a technical rule controlling what facts can be presented to a court. It provides the courts with a means to exclude evidence that is relevant but is also fundamentally unreliable. Eg forced/concocted confessions.
If person A claims person B injured her while driving, with whom does the burden of proof lie?
Person A because they are making the claim.
What does it mean if evidence is ‘conclusive’?
evidence is conclusive only where, BY VIRTUE OF A RULE OF LAW, it cannot be contradicted. Eg a child under the age of ten is legally incapable of committing a crime. A child’s age would therefore be conclusive evidence that they could not have committed a crime.
What is ‘semantic ambiguity’?
where words have more than one meaning, trying to work out which meaning is intended.
What are the dangers of using synonyms to replace ambiguous terms in statutes?
- Their can be profound differences between a word’s synonym in common English and its synonym in legal English.
- Even if a word is a good synonym for the one which it replaces, it rarely advances our understanding of the original’s meanings.
