Corpus-Paul

["Eric Zuesse" <cettel AT shoreham.net>]

For some reason, this was not posted, so I re-send it:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Zuesse" <cettel AT shoreham.net>
To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2002 11:24 AM
Subject: Re: [corpus-paul] RE: Jerusalem conference


> Re: David Hindley's:
> >
> > This is intreresting! For some while I have thought about employing
legal
> > methodology to this kind of evidence. Can you provide a short
bibliography
> > of reference material (particularly in English) that summarizes the
"rules
> > of evidence" used in lawcourts?
> >
> > Evidence type hyp. form. hyp. conf. other?
>
> Thanks for your interest, David. I'm happy to see that someone besides
> myself shares this interest. The sixth chapter of the book I'm doing deals
> with the subject.
>
> That chapter contrasts scholarly investigative methodology and
> methodological assumptions versus their counterparts in legal/forensic
> investigations. However, I don't give specific references to the
> legal/forensic "literature" (consisting almost entirely of case law, but
> also of a little of statute law from countries around the world), because
> what are called "rules of evidence" are still very much in a preliminary
> stage, barely being born, and very much in flux, all over the world.
> Consequently, especially, everything that exists, up to the present time,
> pertaining to documentary evidence, is just snippets, nothing systematic,
> not anywhere. For example, even the borderlines between "forensic" and
> "legal" investigative issues aren't at all clear, and the respective
> professional associations on both sides of that divide constitute separate
> worlds that barely communicate with each other outside of their work on
> specific cases.
>
> This is the reason why courts' investigations and analyses of documentary
> evidence, up to the present time, are based on little that is systematic
> except for "forensic" analysis of papers, inks, signatures, etc. The
> methodologies that lawyers use to interpret those documents after
"forensic"
> investigators have dated and authenticated documents, are extremely
> different than any scholarly methodology, and this is the area that I am
> especially interested in, and which has never been applied to such things
as
> the Paulines, the Gospels, Plato, etc. It's somewhat like Sitz in Leben,
but
> still very different, especially because the latter assumes the
> honesty-of-intent of any given document-writer (for example, statements in
> classical documents such as the Paulines can be judged to be "false" but
not
> to be "lies"), whereas in any legal/forensic investigation the motives of
> the writer of any document are subjected to total skepticism, and so
> honesty-of-intent is not assumed (and a legal/forensian is therefore free
to
> discuss such issues as whether any given statement in the New Testament is
a
> "lie," and not only whether it is "false").
>
> The biggest difference is that a court questions not only truthfulness but
> also motives, and cannot render judgment reconstructing events on the
basis
> of a given body of documentary evidence unless it states a theory
concerning
> the motives of those writers; those motives have to be a part of the
court's
> explanation of how those events took place.
>
> As I said, this is a field that is in a very early stage of evolution,
> especially because most of the document-built are white-collar-crime
cases,
> and that is a very new area or field of law. For example, until 1934,
there
> was no law against insider trading, not anywhere in the world, and until
> 1961, no prosecution had ever been brought against the crime of insider
> trading.
>
> Best,
>
> Eric Zuesse
> cettel AT shoreham.net
>