Higher-order evidence and legal cross-examination

This paper aims to show the central role that higher-order evidence plays in an established cultural practice in our society, namely, legal cross-examination. First, we will show how legal cross-examination can be epistemologically reconstructed as an epistemic practice that has the higher-order defeat of a witness’ testimony as its main goal. Then, we will discuss how different paradigmatic cases of successful cross-examination arguably instantiate different mechanisms of higher-order defeat that have been described in the epistemological literature. We will argue that our analysis further demonstrates the significance of higher-order evidence as an epistemic phenomenon and provides a prima facie case for a pluralist view of higher-order defeat.