Adopting a floating standard of proof would offend accused persons' right to consistent weighting of moral harm.

The argument is better interpreted as a normative argument—as advancing the claim about what the law ought to be and not what it is. The standard of proof ought to vary from case to case. But this proposal faces a second objection. For convenience, the objection will be elaborated in the criminal setting; in principle, civil litigants have the same two rights that we shall identify. According to Dworkin (1981), moral harm arises as an objective moral fact when a person is erroneously convicted o