On Wednesday, 27 November 2013, Dr. Lluís Muñoz Sabaté, a professor of Procedural Law at the UIC and the Director of the Institute of Forensic Evidence and Probative Law at the ESADE Faculty of Law, gave the lecture «Contributions to a Forensic Evidence Dictionary» as part of the annual seminar organized by the Department of Procedural Law for faculty professors.
Muñoz Sabaté discussed some aspects of forensic evidence, a key discipline in legal action. The lecturer put forth some of the main entries in a forensic evidence dictionary he is working on that will be of special interest to judges, prosecutors and lawyers. He then presented the professors in attendance with his view of forensic evidence as something different from probative law and he stressed the importance of training students in the task of how to prove the facts in a court case.
In this regard, he reminded them that being aware of the rules governing the participation of witnesses in a trial is not enough; it is also necessary to know how to question them properly and assess them as a source of evidence.
Forensic evidence, which is not usually taught in most faculties of law (the UIC being one of the few exceptions), has emerged as a form of theoretical and practical know-how that is key to fulfilling one of lawyers’ main responsibilities: proving the facts. In the words of Dr. Muñoz Sabaté, “O provare, o soccombere”.
The lecture was held as part of the annual seminar that the Department of Procedural Law has organized since last year as a form of training for its professors. Members of the department are invited to discuss the results of their individual research projects with an audience of their peers and well-known experts in the field are invited to give talks about relevant subject matter, which are followed by an open discussion.
