People who like a certain dead author sometimes speculate how he would have reacted to current events. This seems dumb, and so does the similar activity of trying to guess how the dead writers of an old law would have felt about new developments. There certainly are many historical questions that we ll never have the answers to, especially those requiring proof that a person did something deliberately. This is just so much guesswork. These fact disputes arise even when the judge is trying to find the truth, and American judges certainly do not always do that.
Judges exclude evidence for many reasons.
One is that the court s time and resources are more important than those of the citizens who come to them, so it s often a matter of whatever makes things go faster and easier for the judge. I have a suggestion in this regard. Since we re often unable or unwilling to get into the facts and figure out what really happened, we should not forget how important it is just to give people an opportunity to vent their complaints and accuse their adversaries. They still won t get justice, but maybe at least they ll feel like they didn t entirely waste their time in coming to court. I think venting your anger is good for you.