Analytical Paper Required: All enrolled students complete a research paper of at least 20-25 pages, with faculty and peer review of a substantially complete draft. This paper can be used to satisfy the analytical paper requirement for J.D. students.

Prerequisites: None

Exam Type: No Exam

This course will examine and compare the rules and standards of evidence in law, history, science, and journalism. What counts as proof in these fields varies and has changed over time, often wildly, long before the current crisis of fact-checking. Emphasis will be on the histories of Western Europe and the United States, from the middle ages to the present, with an eye toward understanding how ideas about evidence shape criminal law and with special attention to the rise of empiricism in the nineteenth century, the questioning of truth in the twentieth, and the consequences of the digital revolution in the twenty-first. Topics will include the histories of trial by ordeal, trial by jury, spectral evidence, the footnote, case law, fact checking, expert testimony, the polygraph, statistics, DNA, anonymous sources, and Generative AI.