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NEW EVIDENCE SCHOLARSHIP IN COMMON LAW COUNTRIES
NEW EVIDENCE SCHOLARSHIP IN COMMON LAW
COUNTRIES
A.V. ARGUNOV,
Candidate of Legal Sciences,
Associate Professor of the Department of Civil and Administrative Procedure
of the Russian State University of Justice
The article is devoted to the review of the new school of evidence, formed in the USA in the
late 60s of 20th century. The research program of the new school of evidence aims to study not
so much the rules of evidence, but the process of proof itself and the specifics of various types
of evidence with the involvement of non-legal sciences. The new school is characterized as
interdisciplinary. Most scientists are turning to such sciences as psychology, sociology, economics
and mathematics. The author analyzes the main directions of research of this school, formed
over the past 50 years, summarizes their results. As a conclusion, a list of results obtained in
the framework of a new research program is proposed. Among them, the most important are:
the formation of the empirical basis of the school and the creation on its basis of a theoretical
model of jury decision making, as well as reasonable assumptions about the behavior of jurors
and judges in relation to the assessment of specific evidence; clarification of the epistemological
and moral grounds of the law of evidence and the process of proof, as well as the impact of
evidence, burden of proof and standards of proof on the behavior of subjects outside of legal
proceedings; clarification of questions about the use of statistics as evidence, relevance and
weight of evidence; creation of mathematical models for evaluating evidence.
Keywords: proof; evidence; law of evidence; comparative law; probability theory; truth;
fact-finding.
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Information about the author
Argunov A.V. (Moscow, Russia) – Candidate of Legal Sciences, Associate Professor
of the Department of Civil and Administrative Procedure of the Russian State University
of Justice (69 Novocheryomushkinskaya St., Moscow, 117418, Russia; e-mail:
Recommended citation
Argunov A.V. Novayа shkola dokazatel’stv v stranakh obshchego prava [New Evidence
Scholarship in Common Law Countries]. Вестник гражданского процесса =
Herald of Civil Procedure, 2019, no. 1, p. 305–342. (In Russian) DOI: 10.24031/2226-
0781-2019-9-1-305-342
A.V. ARGUNOV
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