Northwestern University Press co-published William Twining's Rethinking Evidence in 1994 and Analysis of Evidence in 1998. This new volume, Evidence and Inference, is an interdisciplinary volume exploring the application of techniques of evidence and inference across a variety of fields.
No matter how irrefutable it may seem, evidence is often a matter of interpretation. Incomplete, inconclusive, imprecise, or vague, it is nonetheless the basis of myriad everyday conclusions and decisions. In this authoritative work, David A. Schum develops a general theory of evidence as it is understood and applied across a broad range of disciplines and practical undertakings.
Evidence, proof and probabilities, rationality, skepticism and narrative in legal discourse, and the reform of criminal evidence have all been the subject of lively debates in recent years. This book brings together seminal and new essays from a leading contributor to this new evidence scholarship. Rethinking Evidence contains a series of linked essays which consider historical, theoretical, and applied themes from a broad interdisciplinary perspective. It brings together well-known papers and also includes substantial new essays on the nature and scope of the law of evidence, lawyers' stories, and the case of Edith Thompson. These readable and provocative essays represent a major contribution not only to legal theory but also to the general study of discourse about evidence in many disciplines.
