Objecting Counsel: “No, Your Lordship is to hear the evidence. ”
Evidence law is a mixture of principles, rules, guidelines and discretions. Jeremy Bentham legal theorist, stated it thus; ‘The field of evidence is no other than the field of knowledge’. The law of evidence is a critical subject for any lawyer or indeed party to a proceedings, who is concerned with investigation or the conduct of trials. The law of evidence is essentially about, the facts or materials that, are admissible to prove something that is in dispute.
The John Figgis exercise took a theoretically erudite, but real-world look at how facts that, may establish evidence are employed to substantiate certain results in a law settings. …show more content…
Wigmore developed his mapping system for legal argumentation. But when I first approached the task, I felt ‘out of my depths’ and frankly, I was thoroughly confused. I am not a visual learner; my preferred learning style is auditory. Having to construct the chart was challenging, the first task for me was to find a suitable programme to use to construct the diagram, and this proved easier said than done. Microsoft word offers a number of illustration options with its standard package and I opted to use smart chart, but it took me several hours to find one that, could chart the facts and evidence in the way that, I wanted to. I did not find one that, was on point and so I settled on one that, could best serve my needs under the circumstances. It was a compromise, and I found it impossible to manipulate it to serve my needs. Andrew Palmer writing in the Sydney law review, holds a different view, stating that ‘…software is both easy to use and capable of capturing a variety of different logical relationships between evidence and proposition… ’ Here, however, Palmer seems to be referring to a specific type of software, but he does not say what it is. In any case, given my difficulties, with this type of software, I am not sure that, I would have fared any better had I had …show more content…
I recall when I read McLoughlin v O’Brien , that, my eyes, pricked with tears and that, by the time I had read the facts, I knew (almost instinctively) what the outcome should be; and whilst I lacked the level and quality of legal reasoning employed by Lord Scarman and his colleagues, I did nonetheless arrive at the same outcome, notwithstanding the prevailing case law. I have support in Phillip Brooks who argues that, ‘law needs narrative