claim

An assertion is an act of speech in which a statement is made in the form of an assertion with the right to consent . An assertion claims validity for the content of the judgment expressed .

General

Claims in the field of science are also known as hypotheses . They remain unproven until they are verified or falsified . Assertions, provided they are made publicly so that an interested public can take note of them, in particular normative and political assertions are referred to as theses (of the claimant).

With an assertion someone is pursuing the purpose of expressing the opinions they have formulated or a certain situation in order to influence a certain group of addressees.

Assertions in various fields

• In civil procedure law, the assertion is a statement that does not externally discernible sufficient reason for its certainty , is therefore uncertain and requires proof . In this sense, proof is the sufficient reason for the certainty ( truth ) of an assertion. All assertions that the opponent admits or does not deny are undisputed ; they are established as evidence ( Section 138 (3 ) ZPO ). A party denies civil proceedings if it indicates that the allegation of the opponent charged with evidence is false. A party often asserts facts about which it cannot have precise knowledge, but which it considers probable or possible under the circumstances. By law, she is basically not prevented from introducing such allegations into the process and obtaining evidence about them. According to Section 138 (1) ZPO, an assertion is only irrelevant if the court comes to the conclusion that the party itself does not believe in its correctness or the court considers it to be an arbitrary presumption made without any tangible evidence, i.e. the assertion Opinion of the court "into the blue" has been established. Assertion burden is the burden of a party to assert as many facts in the process as it needs to be victorious. It claims too little, which is action or defense inconclusive. The burden of proof, in turn, lies with the party who has to provide the main evidence and has alleged disputed facts . From this the principle "whoever claims has to prove it" developed.

If the statements of the disputing parties contradict each other in the civil process, witness statements are usually of great importance. However, if there is a lack of witnesses or if the statements cannot be proven through an interrogation , the judge is entitled to believe the claims and statements of a party even without witnesses. This gives both plaintiffs and defendants the opportunity to obtain a judicial assessment of the truthfulness of their own statements. According to Section 286 of the German Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO), the judge is basically allowed to determine “what is to be considered true and what is not to be true” solely on the basis of the submission of the parties and without taking evidence .

If a court classifies a party submission as "unsubstantiated" even though it was not objectively unsubstantiated, this constitutes a violation of the right to be heard , whereby the judgment suffers from a legal error and is open to challenge . It is consistent case law that the party submissions are sufficiently substantiated if the party cites facts which, in connection with a legal sentence , are suitable to make the asserted right appear to have arisen in their person. The obligation to substantiate is only insufficient if the court is unable to judge on the basis of the presentation whether the legal requirements for the legal consequences attached to an assertion are met.

• In criminal law , one knows the factual assertion in the case of utterance offenses . It relates to objective circumstances in reality that are accessible to evidence in a court, i.e. can be confirmed or refuted by documents , witnesses or experts . In criminal proceedings there is the maxim of Roman law that the burden of proof lies with the accuser ( Latin necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit ). In the sense of criminology , evidence means presenting a situation to the judging court using facts that are convincing and reproducible as often as required in such a way that there is no reasonable doubt about the crime assumed by the criminal prosecution authorities in the preliminary assessment of the crime.
• In mathematics , the assertion also needs proof before it can get the status of a rule or a sentence . The assertion “the square of an odd number is also odd” is supported by the odd number in the form ${\displaystyle n}$

${\displaystyle n=2m+1}$

where is an integer . The proof is then valid for the square ${\displaystyle m}$

${\displaystyle n^{2}=(2m+1)^{2}=4m^{2}+4m+1=2(2m^{2}+2m)+1}$.

Because of this representation, it is also odd, whereby the assertion is derived from the binomial formula . ${\displaystyle n^{2}}$

• One of the classic assertions in the natural sciences is on the earth disc from the 6th century BC, among other things, on Hecataeus of Miletus back. Aristotle gave in his book About Heaven from the 4th century BC. Chr. Three reasons for the spherical shape of the earth, Pliny the Elder († 79) took over the view of Aristotle and added it from his own observation. Since that time the claim of the earth disk has been considered refuted.
• When arguing in rhetoric, an assertion is usually justified and objections to possible opposing positions are presented. The claim must be substantiated by arguments , a sequence of statements made up of one or more premises and a conclusion .

Thus assertions always require supporting arguments or evidence in order to ascend to the higher status of correctness , fact or truth . If the arguments / evidence are insufficient (they are legally “unsubstantiated”) or if they are completely absent, they remain as unproven assertions .

Indicative effect

The decisive factor in all subject areas is whether and to what extent an assertion may be considered an indication or whether it achieves an even higher degree of certainty. If the stolen B claims that the thief D illegally stole something from him, the finding of the crime at D is an indication of the correctness of this claim. But if D now claims that B lent, gave or sold the thing to him, this evidence is neutralized. It is now up to the evidence that B and D bring to determine who is right.

literature

• John R. Searle: Speech Files , Frankfurt a. M. 1969.
• Ernst Topitsch (Ed.): Logic of the Social Sciences , Cologne 1966.

Web links

Wiktionary: assertion  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Peter Pagin:  Assertion. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Julius Weiske : Legal Lexicon for Jurists from all German States , 1844, p. 108
2. ↑ BGH NJW 1986, 246
3. ↑ BGH NJW 1986, 246
4. ↑ BGH NJW 2011, 3291
5. ↑ BGH, decision of September 27, 2017, Az .: XII ZR 48/17
6. ↑ BGH, decision of July 10, 2012, Az .: II ZR 212/10
7. ↑ BVerfG, WM 2012, 492
8. ^ Rolf Ackermann / Horst Clages / Holger Roll, Handbuch der Kriminalistik , 3rd edition, p. 48
9. ↑ Jürgen Koch / Martin Stämpfle, Mathematics for Engineering Studies , 2018, p. 51 f.
10. ↑ John Leofric Stocks, Aristotle: On the Heavens , 2015 (English)
11. ↑ See Harald Wohlrapp , The concept of the argument. About the relationships between knowledge, research, belief, subjectivity and reason , Würzburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8260-3820-4 , p. 192.