EVIDENCE
Any matter of fact that a party to a lawsuit offers to prove or disprove an issue in the case. A system of rules and standards that is used to determine which facts may be admitted, and to what extent a judge or jury may consider those facts, as proof of a particular issue in a lawsuit.
Until 1975, the law of evidence was largely a creature of the COMMON LAW: Evidence rules in most jurisdictions were established by cases
rather than by organized, official codifications.
Legal scholars long pushed for legislation to pro-
vide uniformity and predictability to the eviden-
tiary issues that arise during litigation.
Following a lengthy campaign begun by the
American Law Institute, which drafted its Model
RULES OF EVIDENCE in 1942, and the National
Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State
Rules, which drafted the Uniform Rules of Evi-
dence in 1953, Congress in 1975 adopted the
FEDERAL RULES OF EVIDENCE. The Federal
Rules of Evidence are the official rules in federal
court proceedings. Most states now also have
codified rules of evidence based on these federal
rules. Both state and federal rules of evidence
serve as a guide for judges and attorneys so that
they can determine whether to admit evi-
dence—that is, whether to allow evidence to be
observed by the judge or jury making factual
conclusions in a trial.
One important benchmark of admissibility
is relevance. Federal Rule of Evidence 402 states,
in part, “All relevant evidence is admissible,
except as otherwise provided.” The goal of this
rule is to allow parties to present all of the evi-
dence that bears on the issue to be decided, and
to keep out all evidence that is immaterial or
that lacks PROBATIVE value. Evidence that is
offered to help prove something that is not at
issue is immaterial. For example, the fact that a
defendant attends church every week is immate-
rial, and thus irrelevant, to a charge of running a
red light. Probative value is a tendency to make
the existence of any material fact more or less
probable. For instance, evidence that a murder
defendant ate spaghetti on the day of the mur-
der would normally be irrelevant because people
who eat spaghetti are not more or less likely to
commit murder, as compared with other people.
However, if spaghetti sauce were found at the
murder scene, the fact that the defendant ate
spaghetti that day would have probative value
