Tom Regnier — The Law of Evidence and the Shakespeare Authorship Question

Over the centuries, Anglo-American law has developed rules of evidence that are useful in evaluating and weighing evidence for legal purposes. While the Shakespeare Authorship Question (SAQ) is more a literary-historical question than a forensic one, the legal rules of evidence are instructive in examining the evidence in the SAQ. This presentation explores such legal concepts and their relevance to the SAQ as: “evidence” vs. “proof,” relevant evidence, direct vs. circumstantial evidence, presumptions, contemporary vs. posthumous evidence, motive to fabricate, hearsay, and expert witnesses. This presentation will also touch on the debate concerning circumstantial evidence that occurred in the “Comments” section of a Newsweek article on the SAQ, on December 29, 2014 (http://www.newsweek.com/2014/12/26/ca.... This talk was presented on September 27, 2015, at the SOF Annual Conference in Ashland, Oregon. The late Tom Regnier was an attorney in southern Florida who earned his J.D. summa cum laude at University of Miami School of Law, where he taught for many years as an adjunct professor, and his LL.M. at Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan F. Stone Scholar. He passed away on April 14, 2020. For more on his remarkable life, see ShakespeareOxfordFellowship.org/regnier-life. For more on the Shakespeare Authorship Question, visit ShakespeareOxfordFellowship.org.