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Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Law
Shifting The Male Gaze Of Evidence, Teneille R. Brown
Shifting The Male Gaze Of Evidence, Teneille R. Brown
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
In this article I target the altar at which many of us worship—the pursuit of rationality. For evidence purposes, rationality is defined as decisions that are reasonable, objective, inductive, and free from the bias of emotion. This view of rationality is deeply embedded in evidence scholarship and practice. It is also reflected in evidence rules like FRE 403, which treat emotional testimony as unfairly prejudicial simply because it is emotional. The anti-emotion view of rationality reflects the thinking of Western philosophical giants. Plato, Hobbes, Descartes, and Bacon all thought that men should strive for rationality by suppressing their emotions, because …
The Living Rules Of Evidence, G. Alexander Nunn
The Living Rules Of Evidence, G. Alexander Nunn
Faculty Scholarship
The jurisprudential evolution of evidence law is dead. At least, that’s what we’re expected to believe. Ushered in on the wings of a growing positivist movement, the enactment of the Federal Rules of Evidence purported to quell judicial authority over evidence law. Instead, committees, conferences, and members of Congress would regulate any change to our evidentiary regime, thereby capturing the evolution of evidence law in a single, transparent code.
The codification of evidence law, though, has proven problematic. The arrival of the Federal Rules of Evidence has given rise to a historically anomalous era of relative stagnation in the doctrinal …
Confrontation In The Age Of Plea Bargaining [Comments], William Ortman
Confrontation In The Age Of Plea Bargaining [Comments], William Ortman
Law Faculty Research Publications
No abstract provided.
Deciding, ‘What Happened?’ When We Don’T Really Know: Finding Theoretical Grounding For Legitimate Judicial Fact-Finding, Nayha Acharya
Deciding, ‘What Happened?’ When We Don’T Really Know: Finding Theoretical Grounding For Legitimate Judicial Fact-Finding, Nayha Acharya
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
The crucial question for many legal disputes is “what happened,”? and there is often no easy answer. Fact-finding is an uncertain endeavor and risk of inaccuracy is inevitable. As such, I ask, on what basis can we accept the legitimacy of judicial fact-findings. I conclude that acceptable factual determinations depend on adherence to a legitimate process of fact-finding. Adopting Jürgen Habermas’s insights, I offer a theoretical grounding for the acceptability of judicial fact-finding. The theory holds that legal processes must embody respect for legal subjects as equal and autonomous agents. This necessitates two procedural features. First, fact-finding processes must be …
Catalogs, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein
Catalogs, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein
All Faculty Scholarship
It is a virtual axiom in the world of law that legal norms come in two prototypes: rules and standards. The accepted lore suggests that rules should be formulated to regulate recurrent and frequent behaviors, whose contours can be defined with sufficient precision. Standards, by contrast, should be employed to address complex, variegated, behaviors that require the weighing of multiple variables. Rules rely on an ex ante perspective and are therefore considered the domain of the legislator; standards embody a preference for ex post, ad-hoc, analysis and are therefore considered the domain of courts. The rules/standards dichotomy has become a …
Analogical Legal Reasoning: Theory And Evidence, Joshua C. Teitelbaum
Analogical Legal Reasoning: Theory And Evidence, Joshua C. Teitelbaum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The paper offers a formal model of analogical legal reasoning and takes the model to data. Under the model, the outcome of a new case is a weighted average of the outcomes of prior cases. The weights capture precedential influence and depend on fact similarity (distance in fact space) and precedential authority (position in the judicial hierarchy). The empirical analysis suggests that the model is a plausible model for the time series of U.S. maritime salvage cases. Moreover, the results evince that prior cases decided by inferior courts have less influence than prior cases decided by superior courts.
The Promise And Pitfalls Of Empiricism In Educational Equality Jurisprudence, Lia Epperson
The Promise And Pitfalls Of Empiricism In Educational Equality Jurisprudence, Lia Epperson
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
No abstract provided.
Response Essay: Some Observations On Professor Schwartz's "Foundation" Theory Of Evidence, Paul F. Rothstein
Response Essay: Some Observations On Professor Schwartz's "Foundation" Theory Of Evidence, Paul F. Rothstein
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Professor David Schwartz's A Foundation Theory of Evidence posits an intriguing new way to look at Evidence. It asserts that offered evidence must meet a tripartite requirement before it can be relevant. The tripartite requirement is that the evidence must be "case-specific, assertive, and probably true." His shorthand for the tripartite requirement is that evidence must be "well founded." Hence, he calls his theory the "foundation theory of evidence" and claims this foundation notion is so central to evidence law that it eclipses in importance even relevance itself. The tripartite requirement inheres in the very concept of evidence and relevancy, …
What Will We Lose If The Trial Vanishes?, Robert P. Burns
What Will We Lose If The Trial Vanishes?, Robert P. Burns
Faculty Working Papers
The number of trials continues to decline andfederal civil trials have almost completely disappeared. This essay attempts to address the significance of this loss, to answer the obvious question, "So what?" It argues against taking a resigned or complacent attitude toward an important problem for our public culture. It presents a short description of the trial's internal structure, recounts different sorts of explanations, and offers an inventory of the kinds of wounds this development would inflict.
The Death Of The American Trial, Robert P. Burns
The Death Of The American Trial, Robert P. Burns
Faculty Working Papers
This short essay is a summary of my assessment of the meaning of the "vanishing trial" phenomenon. It addresses the obvious question: "So what?" It first briefly reviews the evidence of the trial's decline. It then sets out the steps necessary to understand the political and social signficance of our vastly reducing the trial's importance among our modes of social ordering. The essay serves as the Introduction to a book, The Death of the American Trial, soon to be published by the University of Chicago Press.
A Witness To Justice, Jessica Silbey
A Witness To Justice, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
In the 1988 film The Accused, a young woman named Sarah Tobias is gang raped on a pinball machine by three men while a crowded bar watches. The rapists cut a deal with the prosecutor. Sarah's outrage at the deal convinces the assistant district attorney to prosecute members of the crowd that cheered on and encouraged the rape. This film shows how Sarah Tobias, a woman with little means and less experience, intuits that according to the law rape victims are incredible witnesses to their own victimization. The film goes on to critique what the right kind of witness would …
Minnesota's Distortion Of Rule 609, Ted Sampsell-Jones
Minnesota's Distortion Of Rule 609, Ted Sampsell-Jones
Faculty Scholarship
Rule of Evidence 609, which governs the admission of prior convictions of a witness for purposes of impeachment, occupies an important place in the day to day operation of American criminal trials. The rule is a compromise that reflects these competing values. It admits some prior convictions but not all. Crimen falsi offenses such as perjury and fraud are automatically admissible under 609(a)(2). All other felonies are analyzed under the balancing test of 609(a)(1), which allows the admission of a defendant-witness's crimes if the “probative value of admitting this evidence outweighs its prejudicial effect to the accused.” The rule seeks …
Florida's Request For Admission Rule: 150 Years On The Road To Inconsistency, Ineffectiveness And Appellate Nullification, Mitchell J. Frank
Florida's Request For Admission Rule: 150 Years On The Road To Inconsistency, Ineffectiveness And Appellate Nullification, Mitchell J. Frank
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Truth Machines And Consequences: The Light And Dark Sides Of 'Accuracy' In Criminal Justice, Seth F. Kreimer
Truth Machines And Consequences: The Light And Dark Sides Of 'Accuracy' In Criminal Justice, Seth F. Kreimer
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Epistemology Legalized: Or, Truth, Justice, And The American Way, Susan Haack
Epistemology Legalized: Or, Truth, Justice, And The American Way, Susan Haack
Articles
No abstract provided.
That's My Story And I'M Stickin' To It: The Jury As Fifth Business In The Trial Of O.J. Simpson And Other Matters, Marianne Wesson
That's My Story And I'M Stickin' To It: The Jury As Fifth Business In The Trial Of O.J. Simpson And Other Matters, Marianne Wesson
Publications
No abstract provided.
Grammarians At The Gate: The Rehnquist Court's Evolving Plain Meaning Approach To Bankruptcy Jurisprudence, Walter Effross
Grammarians At The Gate: The Rehnquist Court's Evolving Plain Meaning Approach To Bankruptcy Jurisprudence, Walter Effross
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
No abstract provided.
Evidence, Roslyn M. Litman
Evidence, Roslyn M. Litman
Scholarship
This article is not intended to constitute a comprehensive review of all evidence cases decided in Pennsylvania in the past ten years. The cases selected, of necessity, have been limited. They have been chosen because they affect either a field of special interest or one of special confusion. Cases dealing with applications of the parol evidence rule and with constitutional issues in criminal prosecutions have been omitted entirely because they are covered elsewhere in this Survey.