ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors explain the context and application of Bayes in forensic and legal reasoning. They provide a brief history of the use of probability in legal reasoning, which allows them to introduce some of the well-known cases that have been of special interest for Bayes. The authors explain why Bayes is a natural method for reasoning about legal evidence, especially forensic evidence such as Deoxyribonucleic acid. They turn out that much of the focus of Bayes in the law has been on the presentation of forensic evidence, and in this context, the likelihood ratio (LR), has been widely promoted. The authors explain the special attraction of using the LR, they explain how, in practice, Bayesian networks are needed for its computation. They discuss some practical limitations of focusing on the LR as a means of presenting the impact of forensic evidence.
