民事案件的品格证据
性格与人的行为在我们的日常的生活中发挥着非常重要的作用，人们会去假设和了解别人的行为，并在此基础上做出行为和反应。因此，当法庭被要求判断一个人的违法行为时，通常会将嫌疑人的行为放到特定场合下考量，因为这个场合可能对嫌疑人的行为造成影响。 [1]
品格证据在几乎所有的司法管辖区中发挥着重要的作用。品格证据已被使用来确定是否有罪，已经被使用了几个世纪。多年来，法律已经演变，并且品格证据在民事和刑事案件的适用性变得有限。品格证据应该被重新考量，可能是在当事人的诉讼中，证人，甚至第三方。 [2]通过本文的研究，目的是研究印度，以及对在民事案件中品格证据的法律英语的地位。
在谈到品格证据的时候，有两个重要的问题要问，第一，一个人的性格是否有关，以及，在什么情况下性格会与此有关。
Character Evidence Of The Civil Cases Law Essay
The character and conduct of people play a very important role in our day to day lives, people act and react and go about their daily lives based on their assumptions of what other people will do. Thus, when a court is asked to judge a person’s conduct on a particular occasion it may become pertinent to question the person’s conduct. [1]
Character evidence plays an important role in almost all jurisdictions. The character of persons has been used in order to determine guilt for centuries. Over the years the law has evolved and the applicability of character evidence to civil and criminal cases has become limited. The character sought to be proved, may be of the parties to the proceedings, the witnesses or even third parties. [2] Through this paper, the researcher seeks to study the Indian as well as the English position on the law of character evidence in civil cases.
While talking about character evidence, there are two important questions to be asked, firstly, whether the character of a person is relevant, and if relevant under what circumstances they become so relevant. The second question to be asked is when such character becomes relevant, how it is to be proved. This paper seeks to address these questions.
In addition to the above questions this paper also seeks to look into how such character evidence is appreciated and whether it is possible to evaluate such evidence objectively without being influenced by various biases. The researcher takes the example of custody cases, across jurisdictions to try and answer this question.
What is Character?
The character of a person is a summary of his past actions whether good or bad. [3] English Law does not have a single, well defined technical meaning for character, it is however understood to include both disposition as well as reputation. Similarly the Indian Evidence Act, under the explanation to Section 55 makes a feeble attempt to explain the meaning of character, it merely states that the word ‘character’ includes both disposition as well as reputation. [4] However disposition and reputation are not the same thing.
Disposition of a person is what he actually is, it means a person’s entire character or “the sum of inherited and acquired ethical traits which gives a man his individuality,” sometimes character may also mean a single trait such as honesty, chastity etc. [5]
Reputation on the other hand is the community opinion as to what a person is supposed to be. It should be noted that in law, reputation is the chief means of proving a person’s character. Evidence of the general reputation of a person affords the basis for an inference as to the actual character. However the words character and reputation are used synonymously. [6]
Circumstances Under Which Character Evidence May Be Adduced-
In both English law as well as Indian law, the evidence of a person’s character may be offered under two circumstances, firstly to prove its existence as one of the facts in the case, that is character as a fact in issue and secondly to prove its existence as circumstantial evidence in order to prove another fact therein. In the first case, the character of the person is the disputed fact and it is the existence of such character which has to be proved by evidence, while in the second case character is offered and used as evidence, as the basis to infer some other facts in the case. [7]
THE HEARSAY RULE
This distinction is important where the rule of hearsay is concerned. A hearsay statement is defined as an assertion other than one made by a person while giving oral evidence in the proceedings tendered as eviden
