Thin Empirics: Comment on Allen & Pardo Relative Plausibility and its Critics

Abstract

In the target article of this symposium, Ron Allen and Michael Pardo advance the empirical claim that Relative Plausibility is the best account of juridical proof. While I tend to agree with the relative plausibility approach and endorse its holistic underpinnings, the article suffers from three weaknesses. First, the authors fail to substantiate their empirical claim. Second, the authors cite too casually to the Story Model. For all its brilliance, the story model provides too narrow a basis to serve as a general model of legal fact-finding. Finally, the authors fail to appreciate the adverse effects of holistic cognition on legal fact-finding.