The rules of evidence or evidence law is about the admissibility of evidence (admissibility), correlation (relevancy), the value (weight) and sufficient (sufficiency) as well as the burden of proof (Burden of Proof) general legal principles and rules of the problem. The law of evidence USA and other procedural law, also with the characteristics of adversarial litigation and the jury system. For example, evidence responsibility belongs to the plaintiff and the defendant not to judge; all the witnesses are for the plaintiff or the defendant to appear in court not to testify in court; a lot of rules of evidence are all around the jury can only set.

According to the traditional legal USA, there are two basic types of evidence (types of evidence) and three basic forms (forms of evidence). Two basic types of is direct evidence (direct evidence) and indirect evidence (indirect evidence) or circumstantial evidence (circumstantial evidence). Three basic forms including oral evidence, real evidence (testimonial evidence) (tangible evidence) and the judicial cognition (judicial notice). Among them, the physical evidence that in cases of the "show items" (physical exhibit), which includes the real evidence (real evidence) and demonstrative evidence (demonstrative evidence). The former refers to the case of "the real thing", such as murder with a gun, a forged check etc.. The latter can only show that audio-visual materials in some cases in the case, such as the scene model, schema. The judicial cognition refers to those without special proof by the judge to confirm the facts, such as San Francisco city belongs to the jurisdiction of California range; July at seven thirty in the afternoon in Texas, Dallas is the day of the evening; through blood tests to determine whether drunk wine is a kind of can adopt scientific method etc..

In America rules of evidence, the admissibility of evidence is the core. Determine whether a evidence can be used, the main should review substantive (materiality), proof (probativeness) and effectiveness (competency). While substantial and that together form the correlation. Because of America lawyers often use no correlation in the other evidence is presented against the time (irrelevant), no substantial (immaterial), no effectiveness (incompetent) of these three concepts, so some people have for the "three noes" rules of evidence of adopted rules

The law of evidence America mainly exists in a lot of court decisions. In 1975 the "federal rules of evidence" is suitable for all levels of federal courts. Although the United States legal National Congress in 1953 launched the "uniform rules of evidence" (Uniform Rules of Evidence), but the evidence law the state still has a lot of difference. Another feature of American of evidence law is the rules of evidence and the civil cases in criminal cases, the rules of evidence in basically the same.

Although the evidence law American can have specific provisions adopted issue in evidence, discretion but drinking use evidence to prove the facts of the case problems in the evidence value judgment is to judge and jury greatly. Therefore, the proof system should also belong to the "free proof" (Free Proof) category, and should not belong to "the regulation that" or "legal proof" (Regulated Proof) category.

Source: Legal English translation