In a country where facts and truth are deeply contested, it would be surprising if we agreed on what makes a person worthy of belief. The premise that there is such a consensus, however, is at the heart of how credibility is conceptualized in the law. Credibility jurisprudence is centered around the fiction that there is a societal understanding of what (and who) is believable.

American law’s credibility problem is not only this fiction but the doctrinal and conceptual neglect that perpetuates it. Although facets of credibility jurisprudence are much-maligned in evidence scholarship, to this point there is no generally accepted definition or operative theory of credibility in our legal system. Even as it is largely taken for granted, credibility has long been a source of confusion and consternation within the law. We lack an understanding of how credibility operates within adjudication.