How many of us have difficulties with the phrase “beyond reasonable doubt“?

Juries in the UK are to be told that this means the same as “sure” for future reference, The Times reported this week (Monday 27th April 2020). A phrase used in English courts for over two hundred years is thus to be dropped from the vernacular of court usage.

Like a lot of language changes to English in the legal ambit, the argument rages between those who wish to make legalese more approachable to the layperson and those who believe certain phrases add a necessary weight of seriousness to the proceedings.

Jurors are, on the one hand, said to be confused by the word “doubt“, yet, on the other, troubled by the word “sure“.

The concept of reasonable doubt has been with us since 1780, there or thereabouts. In these times of eye-watering upheaval, it could be said with some authority that few things are now certain. For a world emerging blinking and cautious from a six week hiatus that few saw coming, the idea of doubt is a fresh topic for the coming weeks and months that will not just be debated in and around our court rooms.

The prospect of eternal damnation for wrongly convicting someone that The Times mentions here, heralded the need for the phrase reasonable doubt to be added to the legal lexicon. Now we are left living in a world where reasonable doubt -and indeed with it a form of eternal damnation – is an everyday thought, both at work and at rest. In court, however, a high degree of certainty continues to be the order of the day.