A priori refers to assumptions that can be inferred without significant evidence, often used in court cases. Some evidence is automatically admitted, while others require proof. Forensic science may be accepted a priori, but can be disputed by defendants. The term can also be used negatively to accuse opponents of not providing enough evidence.
A priori is a Latin term which means “derived from the first” or “from cause to effect”. People understand the term best when they hear it is synonymous with deductive reasoning. It is the idea that certain things can be inferred and accepted without needing a significant amount of evidence, from previous events that occurred. This applies to evidence presented in court or the precepts a court holds on how to interpret the law. In both cases, anything inferred is regarded as unnecessary to be demonstrated by further experimentation or proof; logically proceeds from some prior knowledge.
There are certain types of evidence that can be admitted without having to prove its validity. For example, a witness may have stumbled upon a dead body. There are a priori assumptions that immediately go with this, that the person who was killed is dead. This may not require much additional testing.
When a prosecutor puts all the evidence together for a trial, there may be some a priori evidence that comes with it. Some facts are automatically admitted by deductive assumption and others must be proved. Lawyers must evaluate all the evidence and find the necessary evidence for evidence not based on deductive reasoning and easy to assume from the facts that precede it.
Not all evidence is a priori; some things are much more obvious. A witness to a homicide presents no a priori evidence but confirms the details that a crime has occurred. The witness doesn’t infer murder if he saw it firsthand. He could conclude that he is witnessing a murder rather than an accident, and many things about what the witness saw could make this deduction logical.
Other forms of evidence are more difficult to deduce and require many multiple trials before they can be admitted in court. This may mean having witnesses able to tell the same story about events or using a variety of experts to support the conclusions drawn about what happened during a crime. Sometimes it is even necessary to provide evidence that witnesses are qualified to testify, instead of inferring that this is the case.
Acceptance that forensic science works in a specific way, without experimentation to prove it, could be an example of a priori acceptance by jurors and sometimes courts. Defendants may be free to dispute this and offer expert witnesses to discredit allegedly scientific and therefore error-free testimony. They can provide their own experts to prove that “expert testimony” is not proof of an inferred scenario or that the assumption of science’s perfect conclusions is flawed.
The term a priori is not always used positively in the law and can be an accusation leveled against opposing lawyers. Instead of a logically inferred meaning, it could mean that it is not supported by other evidence. If an attorney argues that someone else’s evidence is only inferred, he could argue that opponents have not provided enough evidence to support a deduction and that such assumptions should be inadmissible.
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