# Prima Facie **The model:** "At first appearance" — evidence sufficient to establish a claim *unless rebutted*. A prima facie case doesn't prove; it shifts the burden: the other side must now answer or lose. The concept is the law's formalization of defeasible reasoning — conclusions held provisionally, at the mercy of better evidence. ## The Mechanism Burden-shifting is the hidden architecture of every argument system. Whoever bears the burden loses ties, so allocating burdens is allocating power: presumption of innocence (prosecution's burden), qualified immunity (plaintiff's), asylum credibility (applicant's). Outside law, the model generalizes to epistemic hygiene: treat first-pass evidence as burden-shifting, not conclusive — strong enough to demand an answer, too weak to end inquiry. ## KB Applications ### Burden games in political argument Conspiracy discourse inverts prima facie logic: it treats the *absence* of rebuttal as proof and assigns skeptics the burden of disproving unfalsifiable claims — the "just asking questions" engine documented across the [[Disinformation Hub]]. The countermeasure is explicit burden bookkeeping: who must answer what, on what showing. ### Prima facie discrimination frameworks as target McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting made civil-rights claims triable by ordering proof. The vault's civil-rights rollback files show the quiet war over burdens — raising plaintiffs' initial showings until claims die at the pleading stage. Burden allocation is policy wearing procedure's clothes. ## See Also - [[Mens Rea]] — what must often be shown prima facie - Stare Decisis — settled burden allocations - [[Confirmation Bias]] — the cognitive failure prima facie discipline corrects