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Full-Text Articles in Evidence
Character Flaws, Frederic Bloom
Character Flaws, Frederic Bloom
Publications
Character evidence doctrine is infected by error. It is riddled with a set of pervasive mistakes and misconceptions—a group of gaffes and glitches involving Rule 404(b)’s “other purposes” (like intent, absence of accident, and plan) that might be called “character flaws.” This Essay identifies and investigates those flaws through the lens of a single, sensational case: United States v. Henthorn. By itself, Henthorn is a tale worth telling—an astonishing story of danger and deceit, malice and murder. But Henthorn is more than just a stunning story. It is also an example and an opportunity, a chance to consider character …
Moral Character, Motive, And The Psychology Of Blame, Janice Nadler, Mary-Hunter Morris Mcdonnell
Moral Character, Motive, And The Psychology Of Blame, Janice Nadler, Mary-Hunter Morris Mcdonnell
Faculty Working Papers
Blameworthiness, in the criminal law context, is conceived as the carefully calculated end product of discrete judgments about a transgressor's intentionality, causal proximity to harm, and the harm's foreseeability. Research in social psychology, on the other hand, suggests that blaming is often intuitive and automatic, driven by a natural impulsive desire to express and defend social values and expectations. The motivational processes that underlie psychological blame suggest that judgments of legal blame are influenced by factors the law does not always explicitly recognize or encourage. In this Article we focus on two highly related motivational processes – the desire to …
Minimizing The Jury Over-Valuation Concern (Visions Of Rationality In Evidence Law Symposium), Richard D. Friedman
Minimizing The Jury Over-Valuation Concern (Visions Of Rationality In Evidence Law Symposium), Richard D. Friedman
Articles
A great deal of the rhetoric of evidence discourse concerns the supposed cognitive inadequacies of the jury. In various contexts we are told that although an item of evidence is probative, it must be excluded because the jury will give it too much weight. I believe this approach has played far too great a role in evidentiary law, and that it is an interesting project to see whether we can construct a satisfactory body of law without relying at all on the cognitive inadequacy argument. I think that, at least to a large extent, we can. In some settings, where …
Evidence - Photographs - Admission To Show Physical Condition Of Person, Michigan Law Review
Evidence - Photographs - Admission To Show Physical Condition Of Person, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
Plaintiff's daughter was killed by the wrongful act of defendant. In a suit to recover for pecuniary injury through loss of financial aid, a photograph of decedent (a pretty girl) was introduced and admitted over objections of defendant that the photograph could serve no purpose relative to the issues, but would excite the sympathy of the jury to the prejudice of the defendant. Held, that no error was committed in admitting the photograph since the decedent's probable contributions for the benefit of her parents depended largely upon "the kind of a girl she was" and the photograph was some …