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Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration

Selected Works

2006

Legal History

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

The “Csi Effect”: Better Jurors Through Television And Science?, Michael Mann Jun 2006

The “Csi Effect”: Better Jurors Through Television And Science?, Michael Mann

Michael D. Mann

This Comment explores how television shows such as CSI and Law & Order have created heightened juror expectations in courtrooms across America. Surprise acquitals often have prosectors scratching their heads as jurors hold them to this new "Hollywood" standard. The Comment also analyzes the CSI phenomena by reflecting on past legal television shows that have influenced the public's perception of the legal profession and how the "CSI effect" has placed an even greater burden on parties to proffer some kind of forensic evidence at trial.

The Comment was published in volume 24 of the Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal (2006).


A Cultural Turn: Reflections On Recent Historical And Legal Writing On The Second Amendment Dec 2005

A Cultural Turn: Reflections On Recent Historical And Legal Writing On The Second Amendment

William G. Merkel

If commentators on the Second Amendment agree about anything at all, it is only that disputants parsing the meaning and importance of the constitutional right to arms cannot avoid involvement in a larger cultural war (and this is the term almost everyone employs)I over the meaning and importance (vel non) of gun ownership to the American psyche and soul. Almost every scholar discussed in this short, inexhaustive review of recent literature calls for reasoned moderation (the other calls for well armed chaos),2 but most writers in the field, including this one, and including those who neither own nor wish the …