The Antiquity of the American Concept of Evidence Essay

The Antiquity of the American Concept of Evidence - Essay Example Even though evidence principle is mostly the conception of common law juries, the United States organized these in 1975 and named them the Federal Rules of Evidence. Even though the federal law is valid merely to federal court cases, almost all states have used them, at times with differences, like their evidence doctrine (Hall & Clark, 2002, 281). Several current elements of American concept of evidence developed from antiquity, such as (1) original writing, (2) privileges, (3) policy-based exclusions, (4) rule 403, and (5) relevance. Due to the fact that written documents can be quite important to the result of court trials, and still can quickly be fabricated, the codes show a firm partiality for original documents. The law is disposed to give up evidence that it hopes to safeguard from admission in order to protect particular relationships (Hall & Clark, 2002). Some of the most common of such ‘privilege’ are discussions with one’s spouse, attorney, etc. (p. 28 1). Policy-based exclusions state that specific laws express social policy partialities to keep out evidence in particular circumstances despite of its relevance. Rule 403 implies that the most vital principle of exclusion of pertinent evidence grants wide judgment to judges to rule out evidence which, even though pertinent, does more to hamper than to promote logical judgment (Hall, 1989). And lastly, according to Hall & Clark (1989), relevance means that merely relevant evidence is acceptable, and relevant evidence is acceptable except if ruled out.