Disclosure

“ Where the disclosure of an informer's identity, or of the contents of his communication, is relevant and helpful to the defense of an accused, or is essential to a fair determination of a cause, the privilege must give way. ”

“ Its inducement is directed to disclosure of advances in knowledge which will be beneficial to society; it is not a certificate of merit, but an incentive to disclosure. See Hartford Empire Co. v. United States, 323 U.S. 386, 65 S.Ct. ”

“ Concealment may be, or may not be, of the nature of deception. Concealment is not right when disclosure is a duty. Concealment of that which may properly be concealed is not in itself wrong. Efforts at concealment must, in order to be right, be kept within the limits of strict truthfulness of statement. Concealment for the purpose of deception is in the realm of the lie. Concealment for the mere purpose of concealment may be in the realm of positive duty—in the sight of God and for the sake of our fellows. ”

“ Disclosure may alter the future course of a company otherwise disposed to indulge in activities which the statute condemns. Disclosure provides the basis for prompt action should a future change in circumstances make full-scale regulation appropriate. ”

“ But these disclosures, notwithstanding they come professedly as an authorized revelation, claim no authority and ask no consideration merely on that ground. They ask to be received solely upon the ground of their intrinsic reasonableness, or their clearly perceived agreement with the deepest intuitions of human reason and the verdict of the most enlightened understanding. They appeal to no miraculous evidence in attestation of their truth, but to evidence of a higher kind. ”

“ Disclosures already made largely for purposes of criticism and aspersion upon individuals or bodies of individuals have given the assailed parties a special position which cannot in justice be overlooked. ”

“ Whatever weight is attached to the value of encouraging disclosure and of inhibiting secrecy, we believe a more compelling consideration is that a process patent in the chemical field, which has not been developed and pointed to the degree of specific utility, creates a monopoly of knowledge which should be granted only if clearly commanded by the statute. Until the process claim has been reduced to production of a product shown to be useful, the metes and bounds of that monopoly are not capable of precise delineation. ”

“ Moreover, the disclosures would certainly bring disaster upon those who are working so loyally to right a grave wrong. They will understand, and they will thank you not only for all that you have done for me but for the cause I support. ”

“ Disagreeing widely on other and far less important departments, all schools, and languages, and ages—writers on law, on logic, on science—agree in accepting what is called the evidence of the senses, although, as we have seen, the senses of themselves can give us no evidence of anything whatsoever; and in this, likewise, there is passive if not active agreement—that the first qualification of a witness is honesty, and that the concurrence of testimony of large numbers is a solid basis for belief. ”

“ There is oftentimes deception, if not absolute lying, in this talker. Why does he receive the secret with the strong promise, “I will tell no one, upon my honour,” if he cannot retain it in his own bosom?
Such persons are not to be trusted twice. As soon as you discover your facts given under covenant of secrecy are blabbed to others, you say, “I shall not trust him again:” and very properly too. Of course he tells as a secret what you tell him as a secret; but if he cannot retain it, how can he expect others? ”

“ The scientific man, desirous not of gaining a point but of ascertaining the truth, and recognizing the untrustworthiness or uncertainty of nearly all human testimony, would in many cases prefer hearsay to direct statements, and would give more for the evidence of a near relation or a wife than for that of all the world besides. ”

“ This conclusion is consistent with our recognition in Doe that " [t] he vast majority of verbal statements thus will be testimonial" because " [t] here are very few instances in which a verbal statement, either oral or written, will not convey information or assert facts." 487 U.S., at 213, 108 S.Ct., at 2349. Whenever a suspect is asked for a response requiring him to communicate an express or implied assertion of fact or belief, [11] the suspect confronts the "trilemma" of truth, falsity, or silence, and hence the response (whether based on truth or falsity) contains a testimonial component. ”

“ We entertain a Suspicion concerning any Matter of Fact, when the Witnesses contradict each other; when they are but few, or of a suspicious Character; when they have an Interest in what they affirm; when they deliver their Testimony with Doubt and Hesitation, or on the contrary, with too violent Asseverations. There are many other Pariculars of the same Kind, which may diminish or destroy the Force of any Argument, deriv'd from human Testimony. ”

“ The fourth test of the source of evidence is:—
(4) Does the witness have a good reputation for honesty and accuracy?
The human conscience is so constituted that many people deviate from the truth for no apparent reason whatever. Some are given to exaggeration; some habitually pretend to know that of which they are entirely ignorant; others are so inaccurate that everything they say is open to grave suspicion. If a witness is known to have been repeatedly dishonest or inaccurate in the past, little reliance should be placed in his testimony. ”

“ It is always desirable that the application of the argument from silence should be checked by comparison with verifiable examples from actual experience, whether that experience is derived from ancient life or from modern.
4. The presumption is that plain statements of fact may be trusted, unless there is a distinct and solid reason to the contrary. Even where there is a considerable interval of time between the fact and the statement, it may be presumed that the writer who makes the statement had connecting links of testimony to which he had access and we have not. ”

“ Let me first speak of witnesses and their testimony. It is sometimes supposed that the desire to be veracious is the only quality essential to form a trustworthy witness—and an essential quality it is beyond all doubt—but it is possessed by many who are nevertheless very unsafe guides to truth. In the first place, this general desire for truth in a mind not carefully regulated, is apt to give way, oftentimes unconsciously, to impressions which overpower habitual veracity. ”

“ But even in treating of our own age and country, most of our information must be derived from the testimony of others, who may have made mistakes of observation and further mistakes in reporting their observations, or may have intentionally falsified them. ”

“ Therefore, what is not manifest upon sufficient evidence no one shall make public or declare for truth; and in short, whatever is secret should be allowed to remain secret, or, at any rate, should be secretly reproved, as we shall hear. ”

“ Who is afraid of the statement of facts? Or do our friends on the prosecution feel that our scientists merely state opinions, and give no evidence of facts? But if this is to be an investigation facts are necessary. If this is to be an investigation, your honor, as a lawyer, knows it is necessary to properly introduce that evidence. ”

“ It is ridiculous to say nothing to the proofs which we have, but to ask for proofs which it is impossible for us to have; to disregard the recollection of men, and to appeal to the memory of documents; and when you have the conscientious evidence of a most honorable man, the oath and good faith of a most respectable municipality, to reject those things which can not by any possibility be tampered with, and to demand documentary evidence, tho you say at the same moment that that is constantly played tricks with. ”

“ Testimony has a general credibility, subject of course to the knowledge and honesty of the informant, when the reports are derived from those who lived during the generation in which a particular event occurred, supposing it to have been one of sufficient notoriety to attract attention, and that the reporter possessed adequate means of information, and investigated it with sufficient care. ”

“ They despise documents which cannot be proved, and they do not, in my opinion, sufficiently realise that a general agreement of testimony, and the already established character of a witness, are themselves arguments for truth. ”

“ The rule, which should guide us in such cases is simple and obvious enough: that the aggregate testimony of our neighbors is subject to the same conditions as the testimony of any one of them. Namely, we have no right to believe a thing true because everybody says so, unless there are good grounds for believing that some one person at least has the means of knowing what is true, and is speaking the truth so far as he knows it. ”

“ So, also, for opinions of parties possessing special learning or knowledge upon the subjects in respect to which their opinions are given, as of a mechanic upon the working of a machine he has seen in use, or of a lawyer upon the title of property which he has examined. Opinions upon such matters are capable of approximating to the truth, and for a false statement of them, where deception is designed, and injury has followed from reliance on them, an action may lie. ”

“ The difficulty is, when testimonies contradict common experience, and the reports of history and witnesses clash with the ordinary course of nature, or with one another ; there it is, where diligence, attention, and exactness are required, to form a right judgment, and to proportion the assent to the different evidence and probability of the thing : which rises and falls, according as those two foundations of credibility, viz. common observation in like cases, and particular testimonies in that particular instance, favour or contradict it. ”

“ They're going to lie in any case; but lies told without any reference to truth knit better than when invented at a moment's notice to explain away another's straightforward statement. There's a plausible theory that culprits taken in the act are best examined in secret, one by one, in ignorance of all the evidence against them. ”

“ But secret falsehood, which in the Lord's sight is the same as open falsehood,—secret falsehood, under all its various forms of misrepresentation, deception, cunning, is daily and hourly committed by how many? by how many, too, who think that they would scorn to be guilty of a direct falsehood? Look through the business world. ”

“ At all events, it is incumbent on those who forbid our inference in favour of any one from such testimony to show some act, or to quote some words, or direct us to some implied sentiments in the individual, whose letters (p. 192) we are discussing, which would give presumptive evidence against our decision in his favour. ”

“ To those who regard the whole affair as imposture, an extremely interesting problem is presented for solution by the original documents, in which the depositions of witnesses are given—namely, how the fallaciousness of so much, and, to appearance, so good testimony on pure points of fact, is to be reconciled with any remaining value in testimony as the verifier of the great bulk of what we think we know. ”

“ I remark this variety, because, in examining ancient records, or indeed any species of testimony, it is, in my opinion, of the greatest importance to attend to the information or grounds of argument which are casually and undesignedly disclosed; forasmuch as this species of proof is, of all others, the least liable to be corrupted by fraud or misrepresentation. ”

“ One of the most powerful instruments in the investigation of truth is where several witnesses, at different times and places, without possible collusion, agree in all material particulars in their account of the same transaction. ”

“ All those who have made themselves thoroughly acquainted with his teachings, have been constrained to acknowledge that such is their firm belief; and their concurrent testimony may be taken as some evidence of the alleged fact. ”

“ TO determine exactly the credibility of a witness, and the force of evidence, is an important point in every good legislation. Every man of common sense, that is, every one whose ideas have some connexion with each other, and whose sensations are conformable to those of other men, may be a witness ”

“ The opportunity for cross-examination, for finding out the bias of the witness, the advantage or disadvantage of his point of observation, the accuracy or inaccuracy in his recollection of the details of what he saw, are all means of reaching the real truth that the introduction of hearsay evidence would entirely exclude. ”

“ And therewith rushed into his mind the conviction that everything was thus explained. No man ever yet entertained an unhappy suspicion, but straightway an army of proofs positive came crowding to the service of the lie. ”

“ To render its influence all powerful, however, it should be exercised by two who, in the interchange of suspicions, and by bartering their inferences, arrive at a degree of certainty in their conclusions rarely accorded to the most convincing testimony. ”

“ That a man should not be heard as a witness, on account of his religious creed, is an absurdity which we cannot descend to notice.
2. The second of the three things which we found necessary, as above, for making the best use judicially of whatever evidence to the fact in question, exists, was, that it should be taken under those circumstances, which are most conducive to trust-worthiness. Those circumstances are constituted by the artificial securities, which arrangements can be made to apply. ”

“ When a die is to be thrown, all persons alike stand on precisely the same footing of knowledge and of ignorance about the result; the 398 only data to which any one could appeal being that each face turns up on an average once in six times.
§ 5. Let us now examine how far the above conditions are fulfilled in the case of problems which discuss what is called the credibility of testimony. ”