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Anchors And Flotsam: Is Evidence Law 'Adrift'?, Richard D. Friedman
Anchors And Flotsam: Is Evidence Law 'Adrift'?, Richard D. Friedman
Reviews
Difference, as well as distance, yields perspective. A comparison of legal systems may search for common underlying principles, or for lessons that one system might learn from another. But it may also be aimed primarily at illuminating one system by light shed from another. This is the aim of Evidence Law Adrift, Mirjan Damagka's elegant study of the common law system of evidence, and he is ideally suited for the task. Born and schooled in Continental Europe, he has lived and taught in the United States for twenty-five years. His relation to the common law system of evidence is, I …
Law In The Backwaters: A Comment Of Mirjan Damaška's Evidence Law Adrift, Samuel R. Gross
Law In The Backwaters: A Comment Of Mirjan Damaška's Evidence Law Adrift, Samuel R. Gross
Reviews
The most problematic part of Professor Mirjan Damaška's fine book is the title.' Professor Damaška does an excellent job of situating American evidence law in the procedural context in which American trials occur. He identifies three major procedural elements. First, juries are traditionally cited as the primary or sole explanation for our extensive set of exclusionary rules, which are said to express mistrust of lay adjudicators. Professor Damaška points out as well that lay juries permit a divided court, with a professional judge who has exclusive control over "questions of law," and that this division is necessary for the operation …