Editing Presumption (section)

==History==

The ancient Jewish law code, the [[Talmud]], included reasoning from presumptions (''hazakah''), propositions taken to be true unless there was reason to believe otherwise, such as "One does not ordinarily pay a debt before term."<ref name="Franklin Science">{{cite book|first=J.|last=Franklin|title=The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal|location=Baltimore|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|date=2001}}</ref>{{rp|6}}

The same concept was found in ancient [[Roman law]], where, for example, if there was doubt as to whether a child was really the issue of someone who had been left money in a will, the presumption was in favour of the child.<ref name="Franklin Science"/>{{rp|9}} Medieval Roman and [[canon law (Catholic Church)|canon law]] graded presumptions according to strength: light, medium or probable, and violent.<ref name="Franklin Science"/>{{rp|20–23}} These gradings and many individual presumptions were taken over into [[English law]] in the seventeenth century by [[Edward Coke]].<ref name="Franklin Science"/>{{rp|60–61}}