so welcome back to evidence uh we're going to now be looking at the very first topic uh that we'll consider as part of the reading and and that's relevance and and as i mentioned in the introductory video relevance is something you have some working familiarity with uh does does the evidence that we're offering pertain to anything that matters in this litigation but we want to use more specific more precise language in understanding the rules so that we're all on the same page and so that you sound like you know what you're talking about a lot of times in the in the questions and answers i'm going to use language that is not identical to the statutory language to make sure you actually understand it but when you're talking to a judge the closer you can hew to the actual language in the statute the the more precise you'll sound and the more credibility you'll have so when we talk about relevance does something matter what is that exact language so let's share the screen again and go and look at go and look at chart of course and we will look at pull this up share and so you should now be seeing chart of course so we've seen the introduction already we want to now go to to relevance and we're going to want to pull up the federal rules of evidence 401 and 402 which are the main rules that govern relevance uh in in in criminal and civil proceedings for all courts that use the federal rules of evidence which certainly includes pennsylvania they have they've adopted their own version of it but much like with the ucc pennsylvania and and every other state in in the country with the exceptions of connecticut and and california use not only the same substance for the rules but the same numbers for the rules connecticut and california will use different numbers and there's certain differences for those two jurisdictions but for pennsylvania and for everybody except those two jurisdictions understanding the federal rules of evidence will get you pretty much all the way you need to be to understand what's admissible and what's not in in a not just a trial but any proceeding that uses uses these rules so when we talk about relevance uh it's governed by uh by two rules essentially 401 and 402 401 says that evidence is relevant if a it has any tendency to make a fact at issue or fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence and b the fact is of consequence in determining the action so there's a lot packed into that uh let's let's kind of unpack a bit a bit of it when you see words like like any any tendency to make a fact that is of issue uh or any fact more more or less probable that is about as low as standard as you could imagine the law having so how good does it have to be doesn't have to be good at all any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence and the fact uh is of consequence in determining the action well what does that mean well that means that that while while your fact might to use the kind of the classic metaphor might make it more or less likely that the price of tea in china is higher or lower the price of tea in china is sort of the classic metaphor for something that's not that's not relevant so the fact that you're making more or less likely has to be something that matters in this litigation and then then 402 says something that's fairly obvious but but it's worth observing 402 says that relevant evidence is admissible unless any of the other provisions of either the u.s constitution of federal statute these rules or other rules provided by the u.s supreme court make the evidence inadmissible the best example of that for those of you who have had criminal procedure or are taking it now the fourth amendment to the u.s constitution has been interpreted to exclude unlawfully tamed evidence so long as exclude unlawful obtained evidence even though it would make a factor issue more or less admissible of course 402 then says irrelevant evidence is not admissible just kind of the other side of rule 401 so those are the rules and in our next video we'll begin to look at this state versus newman case close this for you and i'll come back to full screen stop share in our next video we will look at our very first case state versus newman