Assessing evidence: judges and musical performers as fact-finders

Abstract

There is a deep relationship between law and music, above all because both disciplines are related to a specific society. This society gave origin to their historical forms, and these in turn reflect that society’s thoughts and values.
Law and music might seem very different, because law requires a scientific and logical approach, which rationally screens reality, differentiating and separating it through mutually exclusive categories: permitted/forbidden, lawful/unlawful, and so on. On the contrary, music, as an art, has an artistic, symbolic, and integrating approach, which aims to overcome the division of the Self, and the separation of the individual from society.
However, both judges and musicians perform their tasks while referring to specific rules, which require making Boolean choices (true/false, lawful/unlawful, convincing/unconvincing, and so on) and applying them to particular cases.
This article considers judges and musical performers as co-creators and fact-finders. Focusing mainly on the latter point, it tries to verify if judges and musical performers may follow the provisions of the same rules, investigating in particular the Federal Rules of Evidence and the California Evidence Code.