| Robert Cooter, University of California, Berkeley Winand Emons, University of Bern |
| Truth-Revealing Mechanisms for Courts |
| Session: C-13-12 Wednesday 16 August 2000 by Emons, Winand |
| In trials witnesses often slant their testimony in order to advance their own interests. To obtain truthful testimony, the law relies on cross-examination under threat of prosecution for perjury. We show that perjury law is an imperfect truth-revealing mechanism. More importantly, we develop a perfect truth-revealing mechanism. Under this mechanism the witness is sanctioned if a court eventually finds that the testimony was incorrect; the court need not determine that testimony was dishonest. We explain how truth-revealing mechanisms could combat distortions of observations by factual witnesses and exaggerations by experts, including "junk science." |
| Submitted paper full-text in .pdf |