Rules of Court, Volume IV: Evidence

It opens with the questions everything else depends on: what evidence is for, what judicial proof does, the difference between the burden of proof and the burden of evidence and how the latter shifts, and the standards — proof beyond reasonable doubt, preponderance, clear and convincing, and substantial evidence — set out together so they can be told apart.

Part two takes relevance and materiality, admissibility, the difference between competence and weight, judicial notice in its mandatory and discretionary forms, and judicial admissions.

Part three is the documentary side, and it is taught under the current names. Object and real evidence with chain of custody; documentary evidence and the distinction between public and private documents; the original document rule, formerly the best evidence rule, with secondary evidence and its exceptions; the parol evidence rule; authentication; and electronic evidence under the Rules on Electronic Evidence and R.A. 8792.

Part four is testimony — competency and the disqualifications, the four stages of examination, the scope of each, leading and misleading questions, and impeachment. Part five takes admissions and confessions with the custodial investigation requirements, then the hearsay rule, its rationale, its non-hearsay uses, and its exceptions in full, followed by opinion and character evidence.

Part six is given entirely to the privileges: marital communications and the family privileges, attorney-client, physician-patient, priest-penitent, the public officer privilege, and the statutory privileges including bank secrecy.

Part seven is the machinery of a trial — chain of custody, objections and their timing and specificity, the formal offer and the consequence of failing to make one, suppression of illegally obtained evidence, presumptions, sufficiency and weight including the equipoise doctrine and circumstantial evidence, and how the rules change in civil, criminal, special and administrative proceedings, closing with the Judicial Affidavit Rule.

The eighth part is practice: roadmaps for taking a piece of evidence from offer to appreciation, for examining and cross-examining a witness, and for introducing documentary and electronic evidence; the traps in hearsay, authentication and testimony; comprehensive problems; and a quick reference of the matrices and checklists.

Every chapter is built the same way, in sixteen sections: the governing rule, the same rule in plain language, why it matters, the elements as a checklist, the procedure step by step, the exceptions, a Distinguish box for the concepts commonly confused, the controlling doctrines, a short example, a practice point, the Bar angle, the mistakes students actually make, a one-page Quick Recall, then a law-school problem, a Bar-style problem, and a model answer.