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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

Inconsistency In The United States Courts Of Appeals: Dimensions And Mechanisms For Resolution, Stephen L. Wasby Nov 1979

Inconsistency In The United States Courts Of Appeals: Dimensions And Mechanisms For Resolution, Stephen L. Wasby

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article is based on an extensive study of the United States Courts of Appeals for the Eighth and Ninth Circuits that focused on two interrelated questions. The first question was how judges in geographically large circuits communicate with each other when they are not all stationed in the same city.' The focus of this Article is on the second question-the problem of intracircuit inconsistency. The study is based on largely open-ended interviews with the Ninth Circuit's active-duty and senior circuit judges and with some active-duty and senior district judges who had sat most frequently with the court of appeals …


Parent-Child Privilege: Constitutional Right Or Specious Analogy?, Donald Cofer Jan 1979

Parent-Child Privilege: Constitutional Right Or Specious Analogy?, Donald Cofer

Seattle University Law Review

To avoid reaching incorrect verdicts as a result of insufficient evidence, courts generally require witnesses to testify to all relevant facts within their knowledge. Two important exceptions to this general rule, incompetency and privilege, rest on very different rationales. Developed at common law to exclude unreliable evidence, rules of competency disqualify certain untrustworthy witnesses from testifying. To promote extrinsic public policies, however, privileges excuse competent witnesses from providing what may be highly probative and reliable evidence. In the past decade there have been calls for legislative or judicial recognition of a parent-child privilege, similar to the marital privilege, that would …