Chapter 3 investigates the problematic beginnings of the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) issued by the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) under President Obama. It explaina how the DCL misrepresented existing data, violated the Administrative Procedure Act by changing the law without going through notice and comment, and flouted existing norms. In the process, the chapter provides an in-depth discussion of the changes brought about by the DCL, including mandating a lower standard of proof in sexual assault hearings.

My concern here is with articulating what Law as a discipline or the subject matters that it studies may have to offer to a distinct and semi-autonomous multi-disciplinary field. However, it is worth emphasising that throughout history, and especially in the twentieth century, our discipline has been quite open to outside influences in respect of evidence. I am personally interested in finding practical ways forward, although this paper addresses a more intellectual question: What might we as jurists, and our heritage of both theory and practical decision-making, contribute to an enterprise devoted to stimulating cross-fertilisation, co-operation and the search for a reasonably common core or family of cross-disciplinary relations for Evidence as a recognised multi-disciplinary field?