Evidence law was famously deemed ‘the child of the jury’, its development widely perceived as a by-product of the jury trial. Conventional wisdom tells us that juries, because of their cognitive and epistemic failings, can hardly be trusted and thus need rules of evidence to steer them in the right direction. Therefore, given that jury trials are vanishing in the United States and other common law countries, we must question whether the traditional evidence-law model is sustainable. At the same time that juries have been on the decline, rapid developments in science and technology have led to new forms of evidence, including scientific evidence, electronic evidence and process-based evidence. Presenting these new types of evidence at trials, however, often creates a mismatch with the traditional evidence-law framework. A systematic redesign of 21st-century evidence law to better accommodate the intensified interplay between science, technology and the law seems to be the next natural development. This essay explores these two distinct paths of evidence law—the old, jury-driven model and a new, science-directed model—and argues for preserving the old path while at the same time spending more resources and making greater effort to accommodate these new forms of evidence.

中文翻译：

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证据法的命运：两条发展路径

众所周知，证据法被认为是“陪审团的孩子”，它的发展被广泛认为是陪审团审判的副产品。传统智慧告诉我们，陪审团由于其认知和认知上的缺陷，很难被信任，因此需要证据规则来引导他们走向正确的方向。因此，鉴于陪审团审判在美国和其他普通法国家正在消失，我们必须质疑传统的证据法模式是否可持续。在陪审团不断减少的同时，科学技术的快速发展催生了新的证据形式，包括科学证据、电子证据和基于过程的证据。然而，在审判中展示这些新型证据往往会导致与传统的证据法框架不匹配。系统地重新设计 21 世纪的证据法以更好地适应科学、技术和法律之间日益激烈的相互作用，这似乎是下一个自然发展。本文探讨了证据法的这两条截然不同的路径——旧的、由陪审团驱动的模式和新的、以科学为导向的模式——并主张保留旧路径，同时花费更多资源并做出更大努力来适应这些新路径证据的形式。