“There are only three or four … sets of [preferential] rules. There is a rule preferring the production of the original of a document, in preference to a copy. There is a rule requiring the attesting witness to a will to be summoned to evidence its execution. And there is a rule preferring the magistrate’s official report of testimony taken before him. Then there are a few miscellaneous rules, such as the officially certified enrollment of a statute, etc.” John H. Wigmore, A Students’ Textbook of the Law of Evidence 219 (1935).
preferential rule
preferential rule. Evidence. A rule that prefers one kind of evidence to another. • It may work provisionally, as when a tribunal refuses to consider one kind of evidence until another kind (presumably better) is shown to be unavailable, or it may work absolutely, as when the tribunal refuses to consider anything but the better kind of evidence. [Cases: Criminal Law 398. C.J.S. Criminal Law §§ 833–836, 843–844.]
