{"id":601,"date":"2019-07-30T12:43:20","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T16:43:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/100-online\/the-internet-changed-everything-even-the-law-7\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T16:20:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T20:20:02","slug":"reply-to-professor-rothstein","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/submit\/glj-online\/100-online\/reply-to-professor-rothstein\/","title":{"rendered":"Reply to Professor Rothstein"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In response to <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/submit\/glj-online\/100-online\/response-essay-some-observations-on-professor-schwartzs-foundation-theory-of-evidence\/\">Response Essay: Some Observations on Professor Schwartz\u2019s \u201cFoundation\u201d Theory of Evidence<\/a><\/em>by Paul Rothstein.<\/p>\n<p>It is an honor and a privilege, both to have garnered Professor Rothstein\u2019s careful and sympathetic reading of my article\u00a0<em>A Foundation Theory of Evidence<\/em>\u00a0(hereinafter \u201cFoundation Theory\u201d) and to have the opportunity to respond to his thought-provoking comments in these pages. I\u2019m gratified that Professor Rothstein has agreed with some of\u00a0<em>Foundation Theory<\/em>\u00a0and, while as yet unconvinced on some key points of my argument, remains open to being convinced. No one has more authority than Professor Rothstein to judge a piece of evidence scholarship and call out the thin patches in its argument, and I welcome his suggestion that I try to elaborate some aspects of my argument further in future articles.<\/p>\n<p>My basic argument in\u00a0<em>Foundation Theory<\/em>\u00a0is that relevant evidence must be \u201cwell founded,\u201d by which I mean \u201ccase-specific, assertive, and probably true.\u201d Proffers to the jury cannot be \u201crelevant evidence\u201d without these qualities. This principle follows logically from the requirement of our legal system that a claimant can only win the imposition of liability (civil or criminal) on a defendant by proving things that\u00a0<em>probably did happen<\/em>\u00a0rather than things that\u00a0<em>may have happened<\/em>. Claimants must present a specific narrative that includes the factual elements required by the substantive law for a particular claim. Some specific thing must have happened to give rise to liability, and the claimant must commit himself to a specific, detailed narrative of what happened. I argue further that all evidentiary facts that are necessary to proving this narrative must be probably true if the overall narrative is to be found probably true.<\/p>\n<p>Continue reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2019\/07\/Reply-to-Professor-Rothstein.pdf\"><em>Reply to Professor Rothstein<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In response to Response Essay: Some Observations on Professor Schwartz\u2019s \u201cFoundation\u201d Theory of Evidenceby Paul Rothstein. It is an honor and a privilege, both to have garnered Professor Rothstein\u2019s careful [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":0,"parent":570,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-601","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24390,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/601\/revisions\/24390"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}