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Prompted by several judicial errors in Dutch criminal case law, philosophers, judg‐ es, legal scholars and behavioural scientists recently debated the nature of truth as produced in criminal law. The central question of this debate is whether the knowledge produced in criminal law investigation should meet the criteria for sci‐ entific truth. Behavioral scientists Wagenaar, Van Koppen and Israels (2009, p. 1447-1448) claim that judges should consider the indictment in a criminal case as the scientific hypothesis which they not only should try to verify in the trial but also try to falsify. Philosophers Mackor (2010; 2011) and Goldman (1999) support this claim. Applying the method of falsification to the indictment would consist of testing it by deducing its empirical consequences and measuring these against real world events.1 However, sometimes suspects face charges that clearly include normative ele‐ ments, such as ‘inciting racial and religious hatred’ or ‘defamation of a person or a group of people’. The trial of politician Geert Wilders in Fall 2010 may exemplify how the judicial process of finding empirical evidence is sometimes interwoven with the process of classifying behaviour normatively. The task for judges involv‐ ed in criminal inquiries seems to be more complex than acknowledged in the argument of the authors above, who defend the scientific method for such inquir‐ ies. By neglecting offences in which finding empirical evidence is intertwined with the normative classification of the offensive behaviour, these authors have an incomplete picture of judges’ tasks in criminal inquiries. In this article, this incomplete picture will be made more complete by addressing an example of such offences: the offence of rape in the context of a (heterosexual) relationship. The criminal inquiry of such an offence necessarily includes a classification of behav‐ iour on the basis of cultural values concerning women’s right to sexual self-deter‐ mination. Because of this, Popper’s scientific method cannot offer the right epis‐ temological approach for such inquiries, as empiricism assumes the knowledge generated in the inquiry to be value-free. To strive for the production of valuefree knowledge concerning rape would be nothing less than a mission impossible. A ‘critical epistemology’, that has its roots in feminist standpoint theory, offers a more useful guide as to how judges can find out the truth about rape allegations. A ‘critical epistemology’ acknowledges the interconnectedness of facts and values

What Epistemology Would Serve Criminal Law Best in Finding the Truth about Rape?