Evidentiary Correlation To The Study

In the evidence law of common law system, the relevance of evidence is a different concept from the admissibility, weight and sufficiency of evidence. Each of these concepts has its own subject matter, and these concepts have different functions in different phases of litigation. In normal cases, relevance is the necessary precondition for the evidence to be accepted for legal proof, and only the evidence considered relevant will be further checked by the rule of admissibility. If the evidence is not excluded by the rule of admissibility, the fact-finder will determine the proof power of evidence. In a sense, the sufficiency of evidence is the criterion on whether an issue brought out by one party to the case can be submitted for hearing by the jury. Furthermore, the common law system has created the concept of conditional relevance to deal with the situation in which the relevance of some evidences must rely on the establishment of other preliminary fact.Since the concept of materiality has been absorbed into the concept of relevance, the issue of relevance in the evidence law of common law system comprises two components, provability and materiality. The discussion on the provability of evidence is mainly about circumstantial evidence, and it needs to use logical and empirical methods to check the effectiveness of reasoning process. The criterion on the materiality of evidence is usually that the evidence could be suitably applied to the stipulation of substantial law and the party claims for the current case. In the past, some legal scholars held the opinion that the relevance that comprises only provability and materiality can only be called logical relevance, and in addition evidence should have other positive values to be eligible for the requirement of legal relevance. But the concept of legal relevance could not acquire wide recognition in legal theory and practice, and instead the requirement is that the trial judge must make a balancing process for relevant evidence between its positive value and its possible negative effects.In a sense the most important contribution from common law's theory on the relevance of evidence is to facilitate the development of self-contained rules, the main components of which are rules of character evidence and rules of extraneous act evidence. Nevertheless, because the form and content of these rules are too numerous and miscellaneous, and they have been influenced by the nation's social and cultural background as well as mainstream value to a great extent, the rules for the relevance of evidence in different common law nations have different contents. In an overall way, it has little admissibility for the evidence that someone has some particular character so he will act in accordance with his character in current case. But a more relaxed criterion can be applied to the character evidence for the defendant in criminal case and for or against the credibility of witness. As to extraneous act evidence, if someone's behavior outside the current case has a high degree of similarity to his behavior inside the current case, or is relevant to an important issue, then it can be accepted that the evidence is admissible. But in the hearing of sexual criminal case, evidences with similar characteristics will be treated differently for different evidencesubject. On the one hand, in order to prevent "second harm" to the victim of sexual crime during the case hearing, the evidences on the sexual history of victim are usually not allowed to be used. On the other hand, in order to enhance the strike against sexual crime, the use of evidence on the defendant's sexual misconduct is not limited strictly. On top of that, in the US Federal Rule of Evidence, legislator can make special rules on evidence relevance to deal with some extraneous act evidence based on some considerations of particular kinds of social policies.In order to satisfy its need of the transformation from inquisitive procedural system to adversary procedural system, China should establish and improve the rules on evidence releva...