Evidence Commons^™

Twenty Years After Krieger V Law Society Of Alberta: Law Society Discipline Of Crown Prosecutors And Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Krieger v. Law Society of Alberta held that provincial and territorial law societies have disciplinary jurisdiction over Crown prosecutors for conduct outside of prosecutorial discretion. The reasoning in Krieger would also apply to government lawyers. The apparent consensus is that law societies rarely exercise that jurisdiction. But in those rare instances, what conduct do Canadian law societies discipline Crown prosecutors and government lawyers for? In this article, I canvass reported disciplinary decisions to demonstrate that, while law societies sometimes discipline Crown prosecutors for violations unique to those lawyers, they often do so for violations applicable to all lawyers — particularly …

Dispute Settlement Under The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement: A Preliminary Assessment, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) will add a new dispute settlement system to the plethora of judicial mechanisms designed to resolve trade disputes in Africa. Against the discontent of Member States and limited impact the existing highly legalized trade dispute settlement mechanisms have had on regional economic integration in Africa, this paper undertakes a preliminary assessment of the AfCFTA Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM). In particular, the paper situates the AfCFTA-DSM in the overall discontent and unsupportive practices of African States with highly legalized dispute settlement systems and similar WTO-Styled DSMs among other shortcomings. Notwithstanding the transplantation of …

Abid V. Abid, 133 Nev. Adv. Op. 94 (Dec. 7, 2017) (En Banc), Carmen Gilbert

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court held that the district court properly exercised its discretion in allowing illegally recorded conversations to be used by a court appointed child psychologist to evaluate a child’s welfare in a custody case.

Dna And Distrust, Kerry Abrams, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past three decades, government regulation and funding of DNA testing has reshaped the use of genetic evidence across various fields, including criminal law, family law, and employment law. Courts have struggled with questions of when and whether to treat genetic evidence as implicating individual rights, policy trade-offs, or federalism problems. We identify two modes of genetic testing: identification testing, used to establish a person’s identity, and predictive testing, which seeks to predict outcomes for a person. Judges and lawmakers have often drawn a bright line at predictive testing, while allowing uninhibited identity testing. The U.S. Supreme Court in …

Dna By The Entirety, Natalie Ram

All Faculty Scholarship

The law fails to accommodate the inconvenient fact that an individual’s identifiable genetic information is involuntarily and immutably shared with her close genetic relatives. Legal institutions have established that individuals have a cognizable interest in controlling genetic information that is identifying to them. The Supreme Court recognized in Maryland v. King that the Fourth Amendment is implicated when arrestees’ DNA is analyzed, and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act protects individuals from genetic discrimination in the employment and health-insurance markets. But genetic information is not like other forms of private or personal information because it is shared — immutably and involuntarily …

He Loves Me? He Loves Me Not? He Wants To Keep Me From Testifying?, Cynthia Ford

Faculty Journal Articles & Other Writings

This article discusses spousal privilege as it exists in Montana.

"Testilying" In Family Court, John E.B. Myers

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Fortuity And Forensic Familial Identification, Natalie Ram

All Faculty Scholarship

On July 7, 2010, Los Angeles police announced the arrest of a suspect in the Grim Sleeper murders, so called because of a decade-long hiatus in killings. The break in the case came when California searched its state DNA database for a genetic profile similar, but not identical, to the killer’s. DNA is inherited in specific and predictable ways, so a source-excluding partial match might indicate that a close genetic relative of the matching offender was the Grim Sleeper. California’s apparent success in this case has intensified interest in policymaking for source-excluding partial matching. To date, however, little information about …

Where Are The Records? Handling Lost/Destroyed Records In Child Welfare Tort Litigation, Dale Margolin Cecka

Law Faculty Publications

As child welfare professionals, we have all encountered the “missing” record, most often during day-to-day advocacy. For those who practice child welfare tort litigation, incomplete discovery is also common, even though case records can be critical in determining negligence or malfeasance. In other forms of civil litigation, judges are asked to hold parties accountable for losing or destroying records, and juries are allowed to draw negative inferences about the missing evidence. In contrast, an investigation of child welfare torts reveals that when a defending agency fails to produce credible records, the issue is simply not litigated or does not affect …

Electronic Evidence Annotated Bibliography, Nancy Levit

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Ethical Issues In Collaborative Lawyering, Barbara Glesner Fines

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Post-Crawford: Time To Liberalize The Substantive Admissibility Of A Testifying Witness's Prior Consistent Statements, Lynn Mclain

All Faculty Scholarship

The United States Supreme Court's 1995 decision in Tome v. United States has read Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(1)(B) to prevent the prosecution's offering a child abuse victim's prior consistent statements as substantive evidence. As a result of that decision, the statements will also be inadmissible even for the limited purpose of helping to evaluate the credibility of a child, if there is a serious risk that the out-of-court statements would be used on the issue of guilt or innocence.

Moreover, after the Court's March 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington, which redesigned the landscape of Confrontation Clause analysis, other …

Dealing With Complex Evidence Of Domestic Violence: A Primer For The Civil Bench, Jane C. Murphy, Jane H. Aiken

All Faculty Scholarship

New laws and policies aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence have been adopted across the country throughout the last twenty years. The legal approaches taken to protect battered women and control family violence have brought about significant changes in family law. New laws include statutes permitting civil protection or restraining orders, and laws requiring that domestic violence be considered in custody and visitation decisions. Both of these types of statutory reforms can provide protection to adult victims of domestic violence and their children. Evaluating a parent’s fitness by considering past acts of violence to other family members results in …

Evidence Issues In Domestic Violence Civil Cases, Jane C. Murphy, Jane H. Aiken

All Faculty Scholarship

New laws and policies aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence have been adopted across the country over the last twenty years.The legal approaches taken to protect battered women and control family violence have resulted in significant changes in family law. New laws include statutes permitting civil protection or restraining orders, and laws requiring that domestic violence be considered in custody and/or visitation decisions. Both of these types of statutory reforms can provide protection to adult victims of domestic violence and their children. Evaluating a parent's fitness by considering past acts of violence to other family members results in decisions …

What About The Children? Are Family Lawyers The Same (Ethically) As Criminal Lawyers? A Morality Play, Robert H. Aronson

Articles

A fictional account of a lawyer, representing a woman in a divorce case, who learns from her client that her live-in boyfriend has hit her and her five-year-old daughter. Is her ethical duty to protect the child greater than her responsibility to maintain the attorney-client privilege. She discusses the matter with two evidence professors in search of a solution.

Mapping The Human Genome And The Meaning Of Monster Mythology, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Pre-Columbian cartographers drew their maps to the extent of their knowledge, and then wrote in the margins, "Beyond this point there are dragons." With the voyage of Columbus, we lost both our fear of the geographic frontier and our innocence. We accept that knowledge can generally overpower fear; but we have also learned that the application of new knowledge often has a dark side that can lead to brutality and disaster. The discovery of America, for example, led to unforeseen value conflicts of justice and fairness involving native Americans that were "resolved" only by their merciless subjugation and genocidal destruction. …

Plemel As A Primer On Proving Paternity, David H. Kaye

Journal Articles

Although in the past courts only permitted genetic evidence in paternity suits to prove that an accused man was not the father, with the advent of new genetic tests, which easily can exclude ninety to nitey-five percent of the population in most cases, the supreme courts of Massachusetts, Oregon, and Utah have held that various genetic tests may be used to prove paternity. While a positive move, the admissibility of genetic proof of paternity raises serious questions as to the manner in which this evidence should be presented in court. In the interests of efficiency, some jurisdictions seem to dispense …

Book Review Of Passion: An Essay On Personality , Richard F. Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Passion is a cogently structured, compel Jingly argued and seductively enthralling masterpiece which, in years to come, will undoubtedly stand out as an inspirational source for many who seek social transformation. Unger's style, in this essay at least, is lucid and inviting. Substantively, Passion demonstrates not only the depth of his penetrating intellect but also his command of an array of' disciplines. Unger's polymathy is all the more impressive when we remember that ours is an era in which idiosyncratic specialization is the norm.

Proof Of Paternity - The New Test, J. Rodney Johnson

Law Faculty Publications

The true identity of a child's father has been the subject of speculation in many a case, literally speaking, as far back as the memory of man runneth. And, the rather obvious social problem giving occasion to this speculation refuses to remain a facet of our moral history. Indeed, if statistics relating to the number of illegitimate births in the United States can be viewed as a valid indicator of the magnitude of this problem of speculative paternity in contemporary times, the problem has never been greater.

Stanton V. Stanton, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Re Mccann, A Kelly

Innis Christie Collection

This is an appeal pursuant to s. 11b (enacted 1968, c. 39, s. 2) of the Family Benefits Act, 1966 (Ont.), c. 54, from the decision, dated September 15, 1969, of a board of review set up to review the decisions of the Director. The right of appeal is narrow, being limited to a question of law alone.

A Re-Evaluation Of The Privilege Against Adverse Spousal Testimony In The Light Of Its Purpose, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The recent development in American federal criminal evidence law to be examined and compared with English law in this paper, is a new evolutionary turn taken by the husband-wife privilege against adverse spousal testimony, manifest in the Supreme Court decision of Wyatt v. United States. The House of Lords, in Rumping v. D.P.P., just decided, suggests that the English spousal privileges might be susceptible of similar development.