Law in Context
Emeritus Professors Stephen Bottomley and Stephen Parker AO introduce law in a critical way to the general public, current students and those thinking of taking up the subject. They explain the Rule of Law, the Adversarial System of Justice, where law comes from, judges, juries, lawyers and many other topics, include problem areas such as access to justice.
Law in Context
Episode 15 - Prove It! How persuaded must we be in law?
Send us a text message with feedback
It's well known that for someone to be found guilty of a crime, the decision-maker must be persuaded "beyond a reasonable doubt". This is the standard of proof. In civil claims, the standard is "on the balance of probabilities".
In criminal matters, the onus of proving to this standard is on the prosecution; and in civil claims it is on the plaintiff.
In this episode we discuss what all this means in practice, and note that in the majority of all court matters it doesn't reach this stage because the defendant pleads guilty or the civil claim is settled without trial.
This is said to be different in civil code systems such as France, but although there are major differences in procedure, the required standard actually seems to be similar.
We promise to give listeners our opinion on which system is better - in episode 1000!
For more information about your hosts and the Law in Context podcast series visit our website at https://lawincontext.com.au