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66 B.U. L. Rev. 391 (1986)
The Boston Symposium: A Comment

handle is hein.journals/bulr66 and id is 397 raw text is: COMMENT THE BOSTON SYMPOSIUM: A COMMENT WILLIAM TWINING* This symposium has ranged widely over a bewildering variety of issues. It has, however, focused primarily on a single question: What constitute valid, cogent, and appropriate modes of reasoning about disputed questions of fact in adjudication? Two central themes ran through the discussion: the nature of inferential reasoning in any context and the characteristics and com- plexities of the specific context of adjudication and litigation. I shall concen- trate almost entirely on the second theme; my main object is to reemphasize, especially to non-,yers, the intricacies, the variety, and the richness of those complex social processes that we lump together under the single notion of litigation. Unless we are continually sensitive to these com- plexities we court several different dangers: on the one hand, false polemics may arise from our misinterpreting different concerns as disagreements rather than differences; on the other hand, an oversimplified view of the landscape of litigation may blind us to the enormously rich variety of lines of inquiry that deserve the attention of students of evidence and inference in this context. Insensitivity to procedural rules is even more likely to reduce the practical value of our theoretical debates. Before expanding on this theme, let me make some preliminary observa- tions about this particular symposium. First, this was an interdisciplinary event. The ethnography of interdisciplinary encounters teaches us to look out for two endemic problems: breakdown of communication and imperialist battles. Both were apparent at Boston. It was, for instance, quite late in the proceedings before it was made explicit that when lawyers talk of questions of fact, they are using a term of art. Questions of fact presented to juries can be largely evaluative questions (for example, did he behave reasonably under the circumstances?), or they may contain an ineradicable evaluative element.' Most debates about evidence, inference, and proof proceed on the simplifying, but generally false, assumption that jurors mainly decide ques- tions of pure or simple fact, which can be sharply distinguished from questions of value and of law. Conversely, it came as a revelation to some of t © 1986 by William Twining. * Quain Professor of Jurisprudence, University College, London. See Zuckerman, Law, Fact, or Justice? 66 B.U.L. REV. 487 (1986).

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