onus probandi

Almost 200 years ago, the British poet Shelley, in his essay “The Necessity of Atheism,” noted that “God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.”

At all events, I deliver them to the reader as I find them set down in ‘myne authoures,’ and leave the onus probandi to the families whose honour is concerned in their perpetuation.

Where two nations are already settled in a country, the onus probandi rests with the party that seeks to exclude the other.

The Onus Probandi, or Burden of Proof, is said to rest with him who would dispute any point in favour of a presumptive, or generally allowed truth.

It is a rule of logic, and a very sensible rule, that the onus probandi, that is the burthen or weight of proving, rests on those who affirm a proposition.