An Inadvertent Lesson in Applied Epistemology Through an Exposition of Judicial Procedure

I recently re-watched a fascinating interview of a fascinating lawyer, James Sexton, on Soft White Underbelly’s YouTube channel. Sexton’s knack for telling a story wrapped around a legal matter immediately struck me upon my first viewing some months back. The entire interview is a tour de force and I highly recommend viewing it if something like that tickles your fancy (accessible via this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5z8-9Op2nM&list=LL&t=1155). The portion of the interview, the philosophical richness of which I only realized upon a subsequent viewing, where Sexton described judicial procedure to the interviewer made me actively ponder something I intuitively practice but did not hitherto that moment dedicated conscious thought to: the management of costs incurred in shortening one’s inductive leap.

In Sexton’s words:

“What makes being a… lawyer interesting is that… a lot of what a court has to do is disregard what happened… because the truth is at the bottom of a bottomless pit. Like, you’re never going to get there.” 

Hearing this comment brought to mind the legal maxim that bad facts make bad law. The implication of Sexton’s description is troubling because the courts, in handing their rulings and setting precedent, we are told, deliberately choose to take inductive leaps longer than if they chose not to disregard as many facts of a tried matter as they routinely do. It obviously cannot be realistically expected that the courts not infer certain things in formulating their judgments. However, if the courts start going too far beyond the information gathered, evaluated, and reasoned through, their risks of handing arbitrary and erroneous decisions increases dramatically. 

This can be framed in the following equation:

• Limited relevant evidence = longer inductive leap = greater likelihood of erroneous decision

The increased chance of setting erroneous precedent, particularly if binding as opposed to merely persuasive, is undoubtedly highly problematic and the courts must take it upon themselves to make every reasonable attempt to shorten their inductive leaps. One obvious tactic to shorten the inductive leap and to therefore increase the inductive strength of a conclusion is to gather, evaluate, and consider as much relevant, high quality information/evidence as reasonably possible. In equation form, this can be represented as such:

• Increased relevant evidence = shorter inductive leap = greater likelihood of appropriate decision

It should be apparent that the equation directly above is merely the corollary to the equation considered earlier. The amount of information under consideration and the length of the inductive leap have an inverse relationship to one another. The larger the amount of relevant information at one’s disposal, the shorter one’s inductive leap in drawing an inference. On the other hand, the smaller the amount of relevant information at one’s disposal, the longer one’s inductive leap in drawing an inference. Ideally, one desires a reasonably comprehensive set of facts in order to overcome the burden of underdetermination. Also, one must exercise prudent restraint during this process because being overly enthusiastic in gathering information risks irrelevant information entering into the decision matrix which naturally impairs one’s inductive reasoning’s strength.

Getting back to Sexton’s comments, and this is why they constitute an inadvertent lesson in applied epistemology, gathering high quality, relevant information can be massively time-consuming and effortful. Inasmuch as Sexton’s exposition of judicial procedure may instinctively offend our sensibilities, it is done out of pragmatic necessity. At some point, as is also the case outside of the judicial realm, the cost of obtaining each incremental piece of information begins exceeding its benefit in terms of handing a prudent decision. Holding the courts to a standard that is unreasonable vis-à-vis their resources and responsibilities risks the collapse of the entire judicial system as even routine cases would drag on for an unsustainably long period of time. It is precisely to avoid such a calamity that the courts must make an economic judgment to efficiently reach maximal certainty with the most amount of relevant information that can be obtained efficiently.