Feminist Perspectives on Evidence

Questions of evidence and proof are fundamental to the operation of substantive law and to our understanding of law as a social practice. The study of evidence involves issues of central concern to feminist scholars,including matters of epistemology, psychology, allocation of risk and responsibility.

Debates about evidence, like debates about feminism, involve questioning ideas of rationality and truth, as well as claims to knowledge both by and about men and women. Social constructions of gender are reflected both explicitly and implicitly in evidential rules and in the way in which evidence is received and understood by judges, jurors and magistrates.

Feminist evidence scholarship is a relatively new but rapidly developing field. This collection brings together previously unpublished work by feminist legal scholars from different jurisdictions. In these essays, they explore the contributions of feminist theory and methodology to the understanding of the law of evidence.

The chapters look at: feminist theory and the rationalist tradition of evidence scholarship; witnesses and the adversarial system; corroboration; evidence in tribunal proceedings; sexual history evidence in rape cases; hearsay; the gendered nature of legal privileges; the influence of evidential rules in settlement before trial; and the use of character evidence in criminal cases.