272
Opinion of the Court
III
We turn now to the meaning of "burden of proof" as used in § 7(c). Respondents contend that the Court of Appeals was correct in reading "burden of proof" to include the burden of persuasion. The Department disagrees, contending that "burden of proof" imposes only the burden of production (i. e., the burden of going forward with evidence). The cases turn on this dispute, for if respondents are correct, the true doubt rule must fall: because the true doubt rule places the burden of persuasion on the party opposing the benefits award, it would violate § 7(c)'s requirement that the burden of persuasion rest with the party seeking the award.
A
Because the term "burden of proof" is nowhere defined in the APA, our task is to construe it in accord with its ordinary or natural meaning. Smith v. United States, 508 U. S. 223, 228 (1993). It is easier to state this task than to accomplish it, for the meaning of words may change over time, and many words have several meanings even at a fixed point in time. Victor v. Nebraska, 511 U. S. 1, 13-14 (1994); see generally Cunningham, Levi, Green, & Kaplan, Plain Meaning and Hard Cases, 103 Yale L. J. 1561 (1994). Here we must seek to ascertain the ordinary meaning of "burden of proof" in 1946, the year the APA was enacted.
For many years the term "burden of proof" was ambiguous because the term was used to describe two distinct concepts. Burden of proof was frequently used to refer to what we now call the burden of persuasion—the notion that if the evidence is evenly balanced, the party that bears the burden of persuasion must lose. But it was also used to refer to what we now call the burden of production—a party's obligation to come forward with evidence to support its claim. See J. Thayer, Evidence at the Common Law 355-384 (1898) (detailing various uses of the term "burden of proof" among 19th-century English and American courts).
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