Deterrence, Retributivism, and the Law of Evidence
Virginia Law Review In Brief, Vol. 93, pp. 189-198, September 2007
10 Pages Posted: 6 Jun 2012 Last revised: 9 Jul 2014
Date Written: September 1, 2007
Abstract
This essay, published in the Virginia Law Review's online companion, condenses the argument of our article, Mediating Rules in Criminal Law. The traditional understanding of evidentiary rules in criminal law as geared overwhelmingly to truth in fact-finding, we claim, is incomplete. Evidentiary rules also perform a deeper systemic function by mediating latent conflicts between criminal law's deterrence and retributivist objectives. We sketch the outlines of our theory and offer a brief illustration.
Keywords: criminal law, criminal procedure, deterrence, retribution, evidence, evidentiary procedure
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