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The 'bootstrapping rule' in the rules of evidence dealt with admissibility as non-hearsay of statements of conspiracy in United States federal courts. The rule was that, in a criminal prosecution for conspiracy, the court, in deciding whether to allow the jury to consider a statement of conspiracy, cannot hear the statement itself, and that the allegation should be supported by independent evidence. If the independent evidence convinced the court that a conspiracy probably existed, only then could such a statement be introduced into trial and heard by the jury. Allowing such statements of conspiracy to prove the existence of conspiracy was considered similar to bootstrapping. In the United States, the bootstrapping rule has been eliminated from the Federal Rules of Evidence, as decided by the Supreme Court in the ''Bourjaily'' case.
In law, bootstrapping can also refer to an attempt to gain jurisdiction over a non-jurisdictional matter through its circuitous relationship to a jurisdictional matter.