Concept
Prima facie
Overview
Prima facie (; from Latin prīmā faciē) is a Latin expression meaning "at first sight", or "based on first impression". The literal translation would be "at first face" or "at first appearance", from the feminine forms of primus ("first") and facies ("face"), both in the ablative case. In modern, colloquial, and conversational English, a common translation would be "on the face of it".
The term prima facie is used in modern legal English (including both civil law and criminal law) to signify that upon initial examination, sufficient corroborating evidence appears to exist to support a case. In common law jurisdictions, a reference to prima facie evidence denotes evidence that, unless rebutted, would be sufficient to prove a particular proposition or fact. The term is used similarly in academic philosophy. Most legal proceedings, in most jurisdictions, require a prima facie case to exist, following which proceedings may then commence to test it, and create a ruling.
The similar ex facie, Latin for "on the face [of it]," is a legal term typically used to note that a document's explicit terms are defective without further investigation. For example, a contract between two parties would be void ex facie if, under a legal system where it was a binding requirement for validity, the document did not require party A to give consideration to party B for services rendered.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
At first, moreover, it begins from many separate centres and only through much collision and mutual compliance arrives at comparative uniformity and centralisation. The common basis of united sensibility supplied by the one organism has to be made real and effective, and it is so at first by sporadic and comparatively independent developments. If self-hood means reference to self of what is prima facie not self, and…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
States what Prima facie is; names Prima facie.
To certain facts, certain facts always do, and, as we believe, will continue to, succeed. The invariable antecedent is termed the cause; the invariable consequent, the effect. And the universality of the law of causation consists in this, that every consequent is connected in this manner with some particular antecedent, or set of antecedents. Let the fact be what it may, if it has begun to exist, it was preceded by…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
States what Prima facie is.
The speaker must mean to assert the proposition either as a universal or as a particular proposition, though he has failed to declare which: and it often happens that though the words do not show which of the two he intends, the context, or the custom of speech, supplies the deficiency. Thus, when it is affirmed that “Man is mortal,” nobody doubts that the assertion is intended of all human beings; and the word…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Prima facie is.
Philosophers who discussed Prima facie
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Applied ethics.