Toward a General Theory of Standards of Proof

Which standard of proof is best for a particular type of case This deceptively simple question has been much discussed but the current state of understanding is unsatisfactory Statisticians posed a general answer philosophers and others launched an assault on that answer practically oriented scholars draw on both strains unsystematically and courts generally offer little or no reasoning for their decisions The goal of this article is to outline a systematic and complete justification for selecting one probabilistic standard of proof over another By training a microscope on one small corner of the law incapacity will contests this article demonstrates the relevance of old factors identifies several new factors and integrates the factors into an approach that will hopefully guide future inquiry One important implication is that the choice of proof standard will almost necessarily be tentative too much is unknown or unknowabl

Russia’s Legal Transitions: Marxist Theory, Neoclassical Economics and the Rule of Law

We review the role of economic theory in shaping the process of legal change in Russia during the two transitions it experienced during the course of the twentieth century: the transition to a socialist economy organised along the lines of state ownership of the means of production in the 1920s, and the transition to a market economy which occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Despite differences in methodology and in policy implications, Marxist theory, dominant in the 1920s, and neoclassical economics, dominant in the 1990s, offered a similarly reductive account of law as subservient to wider economic forces. In both cases, the subordinate place accorded to law undermined the transition process. Although path dependence and history are frequently invoked to explain the limited development of the rule of law in Russia during the 1990s, policy choices driven by a deterministic conception of law and economics also played a role.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40803-015-0012-