Lessons · Law foundations · the standard of proof
How sure the court has to be
A standard of proof is the height of the bar: how convinced the decider must be before the side carrying the burden wins.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
A client reads that a driver was acquitted and asks how the same driver can then lose a claim about the same crash. The answer is not a scandal, it is a number on a dial: the two cases asked the decider to be sure to two different heights, and the evidence cleared one bar and not the other.
How to think about it
Name the kind of case first, then read the standard off it, then say the standard out loud in plain words before using the term.
Worked example
The question a decider is answering: how sure do I have to be?Not are they sure, but how sure the rule requires them to be.
An ordinary civil claim: more likely than not.Fifty-one against forty-nine is enough. That is the whole test, and it is much lower than people expect.
Some particular civil questions: a middle height, clear and convincing evidence.Higher than more likely than not, lower than the criminal bar. Which questions sit here differs from place to place.
A criminal charge: beyond a reasonable doubt, the highest bar the law uses.The state carries it, and a doubt with a reason behind it is enough to stop a conviction.
Your turn
Write the word missing from the usual name of the ordinary civil standard.
Civil standard, by its usual name: of probabilities
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Reading beyond a reasonable doubt as beyond any doubt at all. The word reasonable is doing the work: a doubt that cannot be given a reason is not the kind the standard means.