ABSTRACT

Legal evidence has to do with facts (though even this basic stance has been questioned, in the already extensive literature on the subject). In fact, the law has to do with facts in so many more ways. Law itself consists of institutional facts. Facts determine the content of law: think of Hart’s minimum content of natural law, based on elementary facts of human and social life. Law sets factual limits to human conduct, through threats of punishment and so much more, just as it creates possibilities for important kinds of conduct and its factual consequences, such as legislating and contracting. Lawful (and unlawful) conduct changes the facts of the world. So many more relationships of law and fact remain to be investigated.