ABSTRACT
Supernatural signs encompassed a body of procedures and evidentiary techniques that existed as a grassroots alternative to the jurisdiction of the court system. Such a popular alternative posed a threat to the exclusive jurisdiction of the central legal system of the state and to the legitimacy, logic and order. Therefore, inclusion of supernatural procedures as part of the official legal system helped to circumvent these external threats by applying only minor incremental changes. Co-optation may be a plausible explanation the incorporation of some elements of alternative methods of obtaining proof. That existed outside the formal legal institutions to diffuse the potentially greater threat to the legal establishment. The importance of the legal arena for proving facts was the focus of the analysis by Barbara Shapiro, which demonstrated how science was influenced by the concept of fact already established in law.
