Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1985
Abstract
The process of forensic proof, like many decision making procedures, is a complex admixture of questions, some of which are easy and some of which are hard. What is curious, however, is that in law, un-like most other fields of endeavor in which fact finding is crucial, the incorporation of data in quantitative rather than qualitative form apparently is thought to make the decisions not easier, but more difficult. To be sure, numerical evidence and analysis is not unknown in the law,! but in the minds of many courts and individuals the possibility of "trial by the numbers" is greeted with open suspicion and hostility.2 Is this reaction due to some inherent dissonance between the legitimate ends of judicial proof and the use of quantified data? Or is it more properly seen as only a kind of sociological fallout from the general unease with things mathematical felt by so many lawyers? As one author has put it, "Lawyers are wordsmiths, not number crunchers."3 But is the explanation for this to be found in the nature of the law or the nature of lawyers?
Recommended Citation
29 St. Louis U. L.J. 293 (1984-1985)