Two Major New Publications on Criminal Evidence and Proof

Professor Paul Roberts has recently published two major new studies in the area of criminal evidence and proof.

The first, Criminal Evidence and Human Rights, is a collection of essays, edited with Professor Jill Hunter and published by Hart Publishing. This book explores the on-going “human rights revolution” in criminal procedure and evidence through a series of contributions by leading procedural scholars from around the common law world. It is the culmination of a five-year long collaboration, and includes essays first presented at international conferences hosted by Professor Hunter at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and by Professor Roberts in Nottingham (this meeting was also the Society of Legal Scholars Annual Seminar Competition winner 2010).

Roberts’ second recent publication is also the second in a series of practitioner manuals designed to assist judges, lawyers and expert witnesses to deal with statistical evidence and probabilistic reasoning in criminal trials, produced under the auspices of the Royal Statistical Society. This four-year research project is funded by the Nuffield Foundation: Professor Roberts and a statistician, Professor Colin Aitken of Edinburgh University are the principal investigators, assisted by several forensic scientists. Volume Two in the series, entitled Assessing the Probative Value of DNA Evidence, was co-authored with Roberto Puch-Solis and Sue Pope, both formerly of the (recently disbanded) Forensic Science Service. The practitioner guides are free to download from the RSS website.