Irrebuttable Presumption
The term irrebuttable presumption is a widely used legal concept, which means that a statement can be considered to be an absolute fact which is not subject to challenge whatsoever. Outside the legal frame, such statements are just regarded as facts a case example being that “Earth is round, the sun is hot, or water is wet.” Markedly, it is hard to contradict these statements since they represent that which has been considered correct since time immemorial. Back to the legal framework, comments such as “A five-year-old child can’t commit a felony” can pass as an irrebuttable truth in a court of law and one can be acquitted solely based on that fact. However, the primary question is whether these irrebuttable facts are correct beyond any reasonable doubt.
Notably, in modern courts, irrebuttable presumptions are often accepted as part of the statements provided that they don’t sound like pure fiction. Also, the comments have to be as accurate as possible in order to seen as a reality by the jury (He, 2018). Markedly, any factual statement is treated as an irrebuttable presumption as long as people are convinced it is true. This is different from the rebuttable assumption whereby a comment is considered to be valid until proven otherwise. For irrebuttable presumptions to be viable in the court of law, they should not continuously restate facts that are already known in the public domain. A case example is when a case involves a murder charge. The irrebuttable presumption that the body is dead will not add any weight to the case since it brings no new evidence. In this scenario, the goal is not to prove that the body is dead but rather, to determine whether it was murdered or not.
References
He, J. (2018). The Categories of Presumption. In Methodology of Judicial Proof and Presumption (pp. 191-216). Springer, Singapore.
