Wendie E Schneider
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300125665
- eISBN:
- 9780300216554
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300125665.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
Engines of Truth explores the history of nineteenth-century British trial procedure from the novel viewpoint of efforts to control perjury. Perjury emerged as an acute problem in the Victorian era: ...
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Engines of Truth explores the history of nineteenth-century British trial procedure from the novel viewpoint of efforts to control perjury. Perjury emerged as an acute problem in the Victorian era: new rules allowed many more witnesses to testify, increasing the opportunities for deceit; a broader cultural emphasis on sincerity and truth-telling made the threat seem even greater. Engines of Truth traces the experiments pursued to control witnesses’ truthfulness, from criminal prosecutions and increased reliance on cross-examination, to shame sanctions in British India and inquisitorial investigation in the new Divorce Court. Blending legal, social and colonial history, it employs a broad array of sources, including colonial archival material, provincial newspaper coverage, home office records, literary sources, and legislative records. Engines of Truth concludes with a new look at the pivotal 1898 Criminal Evidence Act in Britain, which allowed criminal defendants to testify on oath, placing that Act within the context of a history of sexual scandals that played out in Victorian courtrooms. While many of the experiments it describes failed, the process of innovation this book charts shaped modern trial procedure. Both the United States and the United Kingdom rely heavily on cross-examination as the main test of witness truthfulness, a by-product of this experimentation. In American law, cross-examination is still described as the “greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth;” this book provides a new understanding of the complex process that led to its ascendency.Less
Engines of Truth explores the history of nineteenth-century British trial procedure from the novel viewpoint of efforts to control perjury. Perjury emerged as an acute problem in the Victorian era: new rules allowed many more witnesses to testify, increasing the opportunities for deceit; a broader cultural emphasis on sincerity and truth-telling made the threat seem even greater. Engines of Truth traces the experiments pursued to control witnesses’ truthfulness, from criminal prosecutions and increased reliance on cross-examination, to shame sanctions in British India and inquisitorial investigation in the new Divorce Court. Blending legal, social and colonial history, it employs a broad array of sources, including colonial archival material, provincial newspaper coverage, home office records, literary sources, and legislative records. Engines of Truth concludes with a new look at the pivotal 1898 Criminal Evidence Act in Britain, which allowed criminal defendants to testify on oath, placing that Act within the context of a history of sexual scandals that played out in Victorian courtrooms. While many of the experiments it describes failed, the process of innovation this book charts shaped modern trial procedure. Both the United States and the United Kingdom rely heavily on cross-examination as the main test of witness truthfulness, a by-product of this experimentation. In American law, cross-examination is still described as the “greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth;” this book provides a new understanding of the complex process that led to its ascendency.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226081267
- eISBN:
- 9780226081281
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226081281.003.0004
- Subject:
- Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
This chapter, which describes how trials have always stood at the exact point of defining tensions within our public culture, argues that to understand the meaning of trial practices, it is important ...
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This chapter, which describes how trials have always stood at the exact point of defining tensions within our public culture, argues that to understand the meaning of trial practices, it is important to identify the ideals that animate the institution and to see the finest of details of what takes place there. It also explains that the trial has occupied a central position during the formative era of legal order in the United StatesLess
This chapter, which describes how trials have always stood at the exact point of defining tensions within our public culture, argues that to understand the meaning of trial practices, it is important to identify the ideals that animate the institution and to see the finest of details of what takes place there. It also explains that the trial has occupied a central position during the formative era of legal order in the United States
Neal Feigenson
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226413730
- eISBN:
- 9780226413877
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226413877.003.0006
- Subject:
- Law, Comparative Law
Some simulations are based on computerized measurements of the litigant’s perceptual apparatus itself, potentially yielding the most objective and scientifically reliable recreations of the ...
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Some simulations are based on computerized measurements of the litigant’s perceptual apparatus itself, potentially yielding the most objective and scientifically reliable recreations of the litigant’s sensory experience. This chapter briefly describes keratometry, the science of corneal measurement, and in particular, the machine-generated image simulation of distorted vision that wavefront technology makes possible. The case study involves another LASIK malpractice claimant, detailing how the image simulation was admitted over challenge at trial. As in previous chapters, the visual rhetoric of the exhibit is also explored: Its creation in the course of routine clinical practice enhanced its scientific credibility but, in contrast to the simulations analyzed earlier, reduced its capacity to immerse jurors in the litigant’s visual experience. The chapter concludes by arguing that trials have not yet educated legal participants and the public as well as they might about the epistemological value of scientific simulations of subjective experience.Less
Some simulations are based on computerized measurements of the litigant’s perceptual apparatus itself, potentially yielding the most objective and scientifically reliable recreations of the litigant’s sensory experience. This chapter briefly describes keratometry, the science of corneal measurement, and in particular, the machine-generated image simulation of distorted vision that wavefront technology makes possible. The case study involves another LASIK malpractice claimant, detailing how the image simulation was admitted over challenge at trial. As in previous chapters, the visual rhetoric of the exhibit is also explored: Its creation in the course of routine clinical practice enhanced its scientific credibility but, in contrast to the simulations analyzed earlier, reduced its capacity to immerse jurors in the litigant’s visual experience. The chapter concludes by arguing that trials have not yet educated legal participants and the public as well as they might about the epistemological value of scientific simulations of subjective experience.
