''Strict rules of evidence'' is a term sometimes used in and about

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common law Common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law primarily developed through judicial decisions rather than statutes. Although common law may incorporate certain statutes, it is largely based on prece ...

. The term is not always seen as belonging to technical legal terminology; legislation seldom if ever names a set of laws with the term "strict rules of evidence"; and the term's precise application varies from one legal context to another. For the purposes of most criminal prosecutions, common law systems have rules about what kinds of

evidence Evidence for a proposition is what supports the proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the proposition is truth, true. The exact definition and role of evidence vary across different fields. In epistemology, evidence is what J ...

can be considered and about how it must be presented, such as the USA

Federal Rules of Evidence First adopted in 1975, the Federal Rules of Evidence codify the evidence law that applies in United States federal courts. In addition, many states in the United States have either adopted the Federal Rules of Evidence, with or without local v ...

or the Indian Evidence Act. These rules often disallow, for example, hearsay evidence or bad character evidence. It is generally these rules — or at times the most restrictive form of them — that are being referred to when "the strict rules of evidence" are mentioned. According to the ''Council of Europe French-English Legal Dictionary'', "(proof according to the) strict rules of evidence" corresponds to the French concept "preuve légale et formelle", as opposed to a situation where "la preuve de la cause est libre" ('the consideration (legal basis) may be proved by any kind of evidence'). A legal system may include different evidentiary standards for different kinds of proceedings, for example for civil and criminal proceedings, and these may all be referred to as "the strict rules of evidence" concerning their particular domain. The term ''strict rules of evidence'' is most commonly used to specify that they are not to be followed. The most common context for this is when a case goes to

arbitration Arbitration is a formal method of dispute resolution involving a third party neutral who makes a binding decision. The third party neutral (the 'arbitrator', 'arbiter' or 'arbitral tribunal') renders the decision in the form of an 'arbitrati ...

instead of to a court of law. Examples in UK law of proceedings not governed by the strict rules of evidence are "civil claims which have been allocated to the small claims track", and "hearings before employment tribunals". At times, the strict rules of evidence are used to define certain kinds of court cases. For example, section 11 of the UK Civil Evidence Act 1995 specifies that "in this Act 'civil proceedings' means civil proceedings, before any tribunal, in relation to which the strict rules of evidence apply, whether as a matter of law or by agreement of the parties", while section 134 of the UK

Criminal Justice Act 2003 The Criminal Justice Act 2003 (c. 44) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is a wide-ranging measure introduced to modernise many areas of the criminal justice system in England and Wales and, to a lesser extent, in Scotland a ...

defines "criminal proceedings" as "criminal proceedings in relation to which the strict rules of evidence apply".Adrian Keane and Paul McKeown, ''The Modern Law of Evidence'', 12th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 2, 305 fn 16, 704.

References

{{Reflist Evidence law legal terminology

See also

References