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A Likelihood Story: The Theory Of Legal Fact-Finding, Sean P. Sullivan

University of Colorado Law Review

Are racial stereotypes a proper basis for legal fact-finding? What about gender stereotypes, sincerely believed by the factfinder and informed by the fact-finder's life experience? What about population averages: if people of a certain gender, education level, and past criminal history exhibit a statistically greater incidence of violent behavior than the population overall, is this evidence that a given person within this class did act violently on a particular occasion? The intuitive answer is that none of these feel like proper bases on which fact-finders should be deciding cases. But why not? Nothing in traditional probability or belief-based theories of …