Trial by Mathematics Precision and Ritual in the Legal Process
The system of legal evidence that replaced trial with battle in continental Europe in the Middle Ages reflected highly numerical jurisprudence. The law generally determined how many undisputed witnesses were needed to establish different categories of punishment and defined exactly how many witnesses of a particular class or sex were needed to annul the testimony of a single witness of a higher order.1 Thus, medieval law, nourished by the abstractions of scholasticism, sought to escape the dangers of irrational and subjective judgments with mathematical precision. DOI-Link for TRIAL BY MATHEMATICS: PRECISION AND RITUAL IN THE LEGAL PROCESS.