Courts need legislative facts, not just adjudicative facts, to make law.

Evidence

Hitherto ignored, but of utmost importance in determining the appropriate relationship between law, fact, and discretion, is the problem of giving the court adequate information to support the formulation of relatively hard and fast proposition of law. … For many purposes it is useful to distinguish between adjudicative facts - namely, facts relevant in deciding whether a -iven general proposition is or is not applicable to a particular situation (tnat is, facts ordinarily, although not always, about what happened in the particular case) - and legislative facts - namely, facts relevant in deciding what general propositions should be recognized as authoritative (that is, facts, ordinarily, although not always, about what generally happens in a class of cases). — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 225

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the legal-process polyad thread and echoes the Wigmore definition of evidence as only covering adjudicative facts; foundational for any law-and-society institutional reading. — connects to: Jury determinations cannot generalize into law because juries lack a recorded rationale. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 167; Courts often make policy without information about situations their rulings affect. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1472
• DEFINE: Defines adjudicative versus legislative facts — a core conceptual distinction for law coursework.

Broader Connections

• Courts often make policy without information about situations their rulings affect. #expands (0.85) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1472