Florida Law Review Volume 67 | Issue 5 Article 2 March 2016 The urS prising History of the Preponderance Standard of Civil Proof John Leubsdorf Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/flr Part of the Evidence Commons Recommended Citation John Leubsdorf, The Surprising History of the Preponderance Standard of Civil Proof, 67 Fla. L. Rev. 1569 (2016). Available at: http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/flr/vol67/iss5/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UF Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Florida Law Review by an authorized administrator of UF Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Leubsdorf: The Surprising History of the Preponderance Standard of Civil Pro THE SURPRISING HISTORY OF THE PREPONDERANCE STANDARD OF CIVIL PROOF John Leubsdorf * Abstract Although much has been written on the history of the requirement of proof of crimes beyond a reasonable doubt, this is the first study to probe the history of its civil counterpart, proof by a preponderance of the evidence. It turns out that the criminal standard did not diverge from a preexisting civil standard, but vice versa. Only in the late eighteenth century, after lawyers and judges began speaking of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, did references to the preponderance standard begin to appear. Moreover, U.S. judges did not start to instruct juries about the preponderance standard until the mid-nineteenth century, and English judges not until after that. The article explores these developments and their causes with the help of published trial transcripts and newspaper reports that have only recently become accessible.