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Christopher P. Guzelian*
The most satisfactory law is invisible: conflicts are resolved
peaceably before formal justice is ever sought. In a less artful
remainder, adversarial parties go to court. Litigating parties
bring with them evidence and witnesses calculated to achieve
victory, whether civil or criminal. Victory, itself, comes with
social cost because it requires a resentful loser. But even if not
ideal, American courts preserve a baseline of truth and justice for
the nation-if only through the government's prerogative to
enforce verdicts. American society has always strongly supported
this truth-seeking through its justice system.' Indeed, the
American Federal Rules of Evidence reflect this imperative by
indicating that their sole purpose is to the end of ascertaining
the truth and securing a just determination.2
Despite our justice system's noble aspirations, truth fatigue
has calcified in our era. Misgivings about reality-about whether
* Associate Professor, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego,
CA.
1. Ronald J. Allen, Truth and Its Rivals, 49 HASTINGS L.J. 309, 319 (1998)
(A legal world in which facts and truth do not much matter would be, I think,
an unpleasant place to inhabit. Security is lost. Planning is impossible.); Letter
from George Washington to Edmund Randolph (July 31, 1795), in 13 THE
WRITINGS OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1794-1798 61 (Worthington Chauncey Ford
ed., 1892) ([T]here is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and
pursue it steadily.).
2. FED. R. EVID. 102; see also Christopher P. Guzelian, False Speech:
Quagmire?, 51 SAN DIEGO L. REV. 19 passim (2014) (discussing importance of
truth-seeking in law). Cf. Triplett v. State, 132 So. 448, 450 (Miss. 1931)
(Different testimony containing the truth of gold and mixed with the dross of
error and falsehood is carried into the crucible of the common sense minds of
twelve men selected for their intelligence, sound judgment, and fair character,
and these minds constituting the crucible of reason often separate the refined
gold from the dross.).
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