Law Commons^™

Recollections Refreshed And Recorded, Leonard M. Niehoff

Articles

Witnesses forget stuff. When they do, the evidence rules give us two tools to help solve the problem. Lawyers call one "refreshed recollection" and the other "past recollection recorded," labels just similar enough to guarantee confusion. Nevertheless, these principles get at very different things and are well worth the effort necessary to distinguish and understand them.

So how do we get there?

The Child Quasi-Witness, Richard D. Friedman, Stephen J. Ceci

Articles

This Essay provides a solution to the conundrum of statements made by very young children and offered against an accused in a criminal prosecution. Currently prevailing doctrine allows one of three basic outcomes. First, in some cases the child testifies at trial. But this is not always feasible, and when it is, cross-examination is a poor method for determining the truth. Second, evidence of the child's statement may be excluded, which denies the adjudicative process of potentially valuable information. Third, the evidence may be admitted without the child testifying at trial, which leaves the accused with no practical ability to …

Jack Weinstein And The Missing Pieces Of The Hearsay Puzzle, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

For the first three quarters of the twentieth century, the Wigmore treatise was the dominant force in organizing, setting out, and explaining the American law of evidence. Since then, the first two of those roles have been taken over in large part by the Federal Rules of Evidence (Rules). And the third has been performed most notably by the Weinstein treatise. Judge Jack Weinstein was present at the creation of the Rules and before. Though he first made his name in Civil Procedure, while still a young man he joined two of the stalwarts of evidence law, Edmund Morgan and …

Expert Information And Expert Evidence: A Preliminary Taxonomy, Samuel R. Gross, Jennifer L. Mnookin

Articles

Federal Rule of Evidence 702 speaks in very general terms. It governs every situation in which "scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact," and provides that, in that situation, "a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise . . . .' In 2000, following a trio of Supreme Court cases interpreting Rule 702, the Rule was amended to include a third requirement, in addition to the helpfulness of the testimony and the qualifications of the witness: reliability. Under Rule 702 …

The Death And Transfiguration Of Frye, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

The rule of Frye v. United States was seventy years old, and had long dominated American law on the question of how well established a scientific principle must be for it to provide the basis for expert testimony. Even after the passage of the Federal Rules of Evidence, several of the federal circuits, as well as various states, purported to adhere to Frye's "general acceptance" standard. But now, unanimously, briefly, and with no apparent angst, the United States Supreme Court has held in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. that the Frye rule is incompatible with the Federal Rules.

Déjà-Vu All Over Again- Elliott's Critique Of Eyewitness Experts, Saul M. Kassin, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, Vicki L. Smith

Articles

Echoing McCloskey and Egeth (1983), and motivated by Kassin, Ellsworth, and Smith's (1989) survey of 63 eyewitness experts, Elliott (1993) recently attacked the use of psychological experts on eyewitness testimony. There are two principal shortcomings of this critique. First, it misrepresents the eyewitness literature and the experts who use it. Second, it merely parrots complaints of the past. The same old arguments are made about the lack of sufficient research evidence, the standards by which experts should conduct their affairs, and the impact of it all on the jury. Perhaps the field needs periodic prodding and consciousness-raising on this issue, …

Expert Evidence, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

It seems that the use of expert witnesses in common law courts has always been troublesome. In his Treatise on the Law of Evidence, first published in 1848, Judge John Pitt Taylor describes several classes of witnesses whose testimony should be viewed with caution, including: enslaved people (which accounts for "the lamentable neglect of truth, which is evinced by most of the nations of India, by the subjects of the Czar, and by many of the peasantry in Ireland"); women (because they are more susceptible to "an innate vain love of the marvelous"); and "foreigners and others ... living out …

Clinical Realism: Simulated Hearings Based On Actual Events In Students' Lives, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

This essay describes a novel clinical format, a simulation course that is based on students' testimony about actual events in their own lives. The two main purposes of the course, however, are not novel. First, I aim to teach the students to be effective trial lawyers by instructing them in the techniques of direct examination and cross-examination and by making them sensitive to the roles of the other courtroom players: the witness, the judge, and the jury. Second, I hope to encourage the students to think about the social and ethical consequences of our method of trying lawsuits.

The Compensation Of Medical Witnesses, Harry B. Hutchins

Articles

The power to compel testimony is inherent in every court, for without it justice could constantly be thwarted. Generally all persons may be compelled to give evidence that is relevant to the matter in controversy. If, therefore, a person who has been duly summoned as a witness at a particular trial absents himself therefrom, without just cause, or attending, refuses to give evidence or to answer questions when directed so to do by the court, he is liable to punishment for contempt.1 But there are limitations upon the general rule, some based upon principles of legal policy and some upon …

Compensation Of Experts, Henry W. Rogers

Articles

The law relating to the compensation of experts is somewhat unsettled, and the cases are not numerous in which the subject has been considered. This very fact, however, lends additional interest to the subject, and the question is one of great importance. In some of the States the law expressly provides that when a witness is summoned to testify as an expert he shall be entitled to extra compensation. Such a provision may be found in the laws of Iowa, of North Carolina, and of Rhode Island.