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Full-Text Articles in Law

Bending The Rules Of Evidence, Edward K. Cheng, G. Alexander Nunn, Julia Simon-Kerr Oct 2023

Bending The Rules Of Evidence, Edward K. Cheng, G. Alexander Nunn, Julia Simon-Kerr

Faculty Scholarship

The evidence rules have well-established, standard textual meanings—meanings that evidence professors teach their law students every year. Yet, despite the rules’ clarity, courts misapply them across a wide array of cases: Judges allow past acts to bypass the propensity prohibition, squeeze hearsay into facially inapplicable exceptions, and poke holes in supposedly ironclad privileges. And that’s just the beginning.

The evidence literature sees these misapplications as mistakes by inept trial judges. This Article takes a very different view. These “mistakes” are often not mistakes at all, but rather instances in which courts are intentionally bending the rules of evidence. Codified evidentiary …


Evidence: 1999-2000 Survey Of New York Law, Faust Rossi Jan 2001

Evidence: 1999-2000 Survey Of New York Law, Faust Rossi

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Evidence: 1998-1999 Survey Of New York Law, Faust Rossi Jan 2000

Evidence: 1998-1999 Survey Of New York Law, Faust Rossi

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Evidence: 1997-1998 Survey Of New York Law, Faust Rossi Jan 1999

Evidence: 1997-1998 Survey Of New York Law, Faust Rossi

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Evidence: 1996-1997 Survey Of New York Law, Faust Rossi Jan 1998

Evidence: 1996-1997 Survey Of New York Law, Faust Rossi

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


The Federal Rules Of Evidence--Past, Present, And Future: A Twenty-Year Perspective, Faust Rossi Jun 1995

The Federal Rules Of Evidence--Past, Present, And Future: A Twenty-Year Perspective, Faust Rossi

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Essay surveys three major transformations in state and federal rules of evidence since the introduction of the Federal Rules of Evidence. The Rules have not only inspired a movement toward codification in the states, they have also liberalized the admission of expert testimony and hearsay. This partially explains thirteen states' reluctance to codify. Judges have furthered this trend by admitting far more discretionary hearsay evidence than Congress intended. Professor Rossi doubts this expansion of the hearsay exceptions would have occurred without the adoption of the FRE and suggests that the newly formed Advisory Committee will produce greater substantive changes …


Compulsory Process, Right To, Peter K. Westen Jan 1986

Compulsory Process, Right To, Peter K. Westen

Book Chapters

The first state to adopt a constitution following the Declaration of Independence (New Jersey, 1776) guaranteed all criminal defendants the same ‘‘privileges of witnesses’’ as their prosecutors. Fifteen years later, in enumerating the constitutional rights of accused persons, the framers of the federal Bill of Rights bifurcated what New Jersey called the ‘‘privileges of witnesses’’ into two distinct but related rights: the Sixth Amendment right of the accused ‘‘to be confronted with the witnesses against him,’’ and his companion Sixth Amendment right to ‘‘compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor.’’ The distinction between witnesses ‘‘against’’ the accused and witnesses …


The Silent Revolution, Faust Rossi Jan 1983

The Silent Revolution, Faust Rossi

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


What Is This Thing Called Hearsay?, John W. Reed Jan 1957

What Is This Thing Called Hearsay?, John W. Reed

Articles

This article is based on an address delivered at the 1956 Advocacy Institute at the University of Michigan. A re-examination of elementary principles, the discussion proceeds on the express assumption that much of the uncertainty and confusion in usa of the hearsay rule is unnecessary because it is due to failure to recall and employ these principles.