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Evidence Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Evidence

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 …


Is Disclosure And Certification Of The Use Of Generative Ai Really Necessary?, Maura R. Grossman, Paul W. Grimm, Daniel G. Brown Jan 2023

Is Disclosure And Certification Of The Use Of Generative Ai Really Necessary?, Maura R. Grossman, Paul W. Grimm, Daniel G. Brown

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Conference On Best Practices For Managing Daubert Questions, Daniel J. Capra, David G. Campbell, Debra A. Livingston, James P. Bassett, Shelly Dick, Traci L. Lovitt, Thomas Marten, Kathryn N. Nester, Thomas D. Schroeder, Elizabeth J. Shapiro, Timothy Lau, Vince Chhabria, John Z. Lee, William H. Orrick Iii, Edmund A. Sargus Jr., Sarah A. Vance, Edward K. Cheng Jan 2020

Conference On Best Practices For Managing Daubert Questions, Daniel J. Capra, David G. Campbell, Debra A. Livingston, James P. Bassett, Shelly Dick, Traci L. Lovitt, Thomas Marten, Kathryn N. Nester, Thomas D. Schroeder, Elizabeth J. Shapiro, Timothy Lau, Vince Chhabria, John Z. Lee, William H. Orrick Iii, Edmund A. Sargus Jr., Sarah A. Vance, Edward K. Cheng

Faculty Scholarship

This article is a transcript of the Philip D. Reed Lecture Series Conference on Best Practices for Managing Daubert Questions, held on October 25, 2019, at Vanderbilt Law School under the sponsorship of the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules. The transcript has been lightly edited and represents the panelists’ individual views only and in no way reflects those of their affiliated firms, organizations, law schools, or the judiciary.


Challenges Facing Judges Regarding Expert Evidence In Criminal Cases, Paul W. Grimm Jan 2018

Challenges Facing Judges Regarding Expert Evidence In Criminal Cases, Paul W. Grimm

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


From Simple Statements To Heartbreaking Photographs And Videos: An Interdisciplinary Examination Of Victim Impact Evidence In Criminal Cases, Mitchell J. Frank Jan 2016

From Simple Statements To Heartbreaking Photographs And Videos: An Interdisciplinary Examination Of Victim Impact Evidence In Criminal Cases, Mitchell J. Frank

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Jury Wants To Take The Podium -- But Even With The Authority To Do So, Can It? An Interdisciplinary Examination Of Jurors' Questioning Of Witnesses At Trial, Mitchell J. Frank Jan 2014

The Jury Wants To Take The Podium -- But Even With The Authority To Do So, Can It? An Interdisciplinary Examination Of Jurors' Questioning Of Witnesses At Trial, Mitchell J. Frank

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Case For A Constitutional Definition Of Hearsay: Requiring Confrontation Of Testimonial, Nonassertive Conduct And Statements Admitted To Explain An Unchallenged Investigation, The, James L. Kainen, Carrie A. Tendler Jan 2009

Case For A Constitutional Definition Of Hearsay: Requiring Confrontation Of Testimonial, Nonassertive Conduct And Statements Admitted To Explain An Unchallenged Investigation, The, James L. Kainen, Carrie A. Tendler

Faculty Scholarship

Crawford v. Washington’s historical approach to the confrontation clause establishes that testimonial hearsay inadmissible without confrontation at the founding is similarly inadmissible today, despite whether it fits a subsequently developed hearsay exception. Consequently, the requirement of confrontation depends upon whether an out-of-court statement is hearsay, testimonial, and, if so, whether it was nonetheless admissible without confrontation at the founding. A substantial literature has developed about whether hearsay statements are testimonial or were, like dying declarations, otherwise admissible at the founding. In contrast, this article focuses on the first question – whether statements are hearsay – which scholars have thus far …


Cross-Examining Film, Jessica Silbey Jan 2009

Cross-Examining Film, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court decision in Scott v. Harris holds that a Georgia police officer did not violate a fleeing suspect's Fourth Amendment rights when he caused the suspect's car to crash. The court's decision relies almost entirely on the filmed version of the high-speed police chase taken from a "dash-cam," a video camera mounted on the dashboard of the pursuing police cruiser. The Supreme Court said that in light of the contrary stories told by the opposing parties to the lawsuit, the only story to be believed was that told by the video. In Scott v. Harris, the court fell …


Judges As Film Critics: New Approaches To Filmic Evidence, Jessica Silbey Jan 2004

Judges As Film Critics: New Approaches To Filmic Evidence, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This Article exposes internal contradictions in case law deciding the use and admissibility of film as evidence. Based on a review of more than ninety state and federal cases dating from 1923 to the present, the Article explains how the source of these contradictions is the frequent miscategorization of film as "demonstrative evidence," that category of evidence that purports to illustrate other evidence rather than to be directly probative of some fact at issue. The Article further demonstrates how these contradictions are based on two venerable jurisprudential anxieties. One is the concern about the growing trend toward replacing the traditional …


Bracton, The Year Books, And The 'Transformation Of Elementary Legal Ideas' In The Early Common Law, David J. Seipp Jan 1989

Bracton, The Year Books, And The 'Transformation Of Elementary Legal Ideas' In The Early Common Law, David J. Seipp

Faculty Scholarship

The language of the common law has a life and a logic of its own, resilient through eight centuries of unceasing talk. Basic terms of the lawyer's specialized vocabulary, elementary conceptual distinctions, and modes of argument, which all go to make “thinking like a lawyer” possible, have proved remarkably durable in the literature of the common law. Two fundamental distinctions—between “real” and “personal” actions and between “possessory” and “proprietary” remedies—can be traced back to their early use in treatises of the first generations of professional common law judges and in reports of courtroom dialogue from the first generations of professional …