Gavel Award
The Origins of Reasonable Doubt
Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial
2009 Gavel Award given by the American Bar Association.
To be convicted of a crime in the United States, a person must be
proven guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But what is reasonable
doubt? Even sophisticated legal experts find this fundamental doctrine
difficult to explain. In this accessible book, James Q. Whitman digs deep
into the history of the law and discovers that we have lost sight of the
original purpose of “reasonable doubt.” It was not originally a legal rule
at all, he shows, but a theological one.
