This Review evaluates Truth, Error, and Criminal Law: An Essay in Legal Epistemology by Larry Laudan.  Laudan’s book discusses the epistemology of law, focusing on proof in criminal cases, and takes the epistemology of legal proof on its own terms, exposing to philosophical scrutiny the adjudication process as a mode of inquiry with the purported goals of discovering truth and avoiding errors.  In his book, Laudan largely rejects the dominant trend in evidence scholarship of relying on probability theory to interpret the strength of evidence and the various decisional standards, and contributes significantly to the epistemology of law, particularly through his analysis of standards of proof.

Further, Laudan launches a scathing attack on the current understanding of the standard of proof and also argues that many current legal rules ought to be eliminated to improve adjudicatory accuracy.  This Review (1) explicates the basic concepts, distinctions, and principles that underlie Laudan’s analysis; (2) discusses Laudan’s analysis of error distribution, with emphasis on issues that include the standard of proof, the burden of proof, and the presumption of innocence; (3) comments on Laudan’s analysis of error reduction and offers some reasons to challenge his analysis with regard to error reduction; and (4) extends Laudan’s analysis with regard to standards of proof by suggesting that the problems identified with standards of proof may be alleviated by appealing to the explanatory considerations that structure and explain the nature of juridical proof.