Law's Credibility Problem, 2023 University of Connecticut School of Law
Law's Credibility Problem, Julia Simon-Kerr
Faculty Articles and Papers
Credibility determinations often seal people's fates. They can determine outcomes at trial; they condition the provision of benefits, like social security; and they play an increasingly dispositive role in immigration proceedings. Yet there is no stable definition of credibility in the law. Courts and agencies diverge at the most basic definitional level in their use of the category.
Consider a real-world example. An immigration judge denies asylum despite the applicant's plausible and unrefuted account of persecution in their country of origin. The applicant appeals, pointing to the fact that Congress enacted a "rebuttable presumption of credibility" for asylum-seekers "on appeal." …
Beliefs And Probabilities: The Errors That Remain Are Mine Alone, 2023 Cornell Law School
Beliefs And Probabilities: The Errors That Remain Are Mine Alone, Kevin M. Clermont
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Imagine that the preface to a professor’s book implicitly asserts that all the propositions in the rest of his or her book are true, but explicitly acknowledges that experience would suggest some errors remain among those propositions. The prof thereby seems paradoxically to believe inconsistent statements. But in fact this famous preface paradox is an illusion. The first statement is a belief reflecting epistemic uncertainty, while the second is a probabilistic statement about aleatory uncertainty. If one were to convert the probability into a belief, one would see that the author rationally holds perfectly consistent beliefs.
Likewise the lottery paradox …
Environmental Evidence, 2023 University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law
Environmental Evidence, Seema Kakade
Faculty Scholarship
The voices of impacted people are some of the most important when trying to make improvements to social justice in a variety of contexts, including, criminal policing, housing, and health care. After all, the people with on the ground experience know what is likely to truly effectuate change in their community, and what is not. Yet, such lived experience is also often significantly lacking and undermined in law and policy. People with lived experience tend to be seen as both community experts with valuable knowledge, as well as non-experts with little valuable knowledge. This Article explores the lived experience with …
Digital Habit Evidence, 2023 American University Faculty Account
Digital Habit Evidence, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
This Article explores how “habit evidence” will become a catalyst for a new form of digital proof based on the explosive growth of smart homes, smart cars, smart devices, and the Internet of Things. Habit evidence is the rule that certain sorts of semiautomatic, regularized responses to particular stimuli are trustworthy and thus admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence (“FRE”) 406 “Habit; Routine Practice” and state equivalents.
While well established since the common law, “habit” has made only an inconsistent appearance in reported cases and has been underutilized in trial practice. But intriguingly, once applied to the world of …
Provisional Measures In Aid Of Arbitration, 2023 University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Provisional Measures In Aid Of Arbitration, Ronald A. Brand
Articles
The success of the New York Convention has made arbitration a preferred means of dispute resolution for international commercial transactions. Success in arbitration often depends on the extent to which a party may secure assets, evidence, or the status quo between parties prior to the completion of the arbitration process. This makes the availability of provisional measures granted by either arbitral tribunals or by courts fundamental to the arbitration. In this Article, I consider the existing legal framework for provisional measures in aid of arbitration, with particular attention to the sources of the rules providing for such measures. Those sources …
The Incongruence Principle Of Evidence, 2023 Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law
The Incongruence Principle Of Evidence, Hillel Bavli
Indiana Law Journal
Evidence law assumes that the meaning and value of information at trial is equal to the meaning and value of the same information in the real world. This premise underlies evidence policy, judicial applications of evidence law, and instructions to jurors for evaluating evidence. However, it is incorrect, and the law’s failure to recognize this hinders its aims of accuracy and equality.
In this article, I draw on fields outside of law—including Bayesian inference and cognitive psychology—to develop a model of evidence that describes how jurors combine new evidence with prior beliefs (or “priors”) to make inferences and judgments. I …
Reforming Eyewitness Identification Processes: Challenges And Recommendations For Successful Implementation, 2023 Mitchell Hamline School of Law
Reforming Eyewitness Identification Processes: Challenges And Recommendations For Successful Implementation, Daniel Manley
Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice
No abstract provided.
Safeguarding The Alford Plea: Minimizing State-Sanctioned Wrongful Convictions, 2023 Mitchell Hamline School of Law
Safeguarding The Alford Plea: Minimizing State-Sanctioned Wrongful Convictions, Zana Molina
Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice
No abstract provided.
Ai Risk Assessment Tools Amid The War On Drugs: Productive Or Counterproductive?, 2023 Mitchell Hamline School of Law
Ai Risk Assessment Tools Amid The War On Drugs: Productive Or Counterproductive?, Matin Pedram
Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice
The War on Drugs refers to a situation in which all the processes of production, distribution, and consumption of all illegal drugs are prohibited. This ambitious goal has imposed considerable costs on societies. The war has weaponized harsher punishments such as life imprisonment, execution, and long-term incarceration against drug offenders. Nonviolent offenders, those who possessed illegal drugs, have been easy targets for governments to show that the war is still ongoing. Although some countries became pioneers in changing the laws to end this costly war, Iran and the United States have made their stance on the drug issue clear, and …
When To Leave The Stones Unturned: Using Proportionality To Navigate Discovery Efficiently, Effectively, And Ethically, 2023 Marquette University Law School
When To Leave The Stones Unturned: Using Proportionality To Navigate Discovery Efficiently, Effectively, And Ethically, Stephen L. Rispoli, James E. Wren, Daniella Mcdonagh
Marquette Law Review
Discovery is intended to be an efficient, truth-seeking process with the ultimate goal of achieving just, speedy, and inexpensive dispute resolution. However, the consistent and extensive abuse of discovery has cast a shadow on the intended purpose of the process. For various ill- and well-intentioned reasons, attorneys abuse the process by conducting unnecessarily excessive and expensive discovery. One such reason for excessive and expensive discovery—and the focus of this Article—is the over-zealous advocacy of attorneys who leave no stone unturned out of fear of legal malpractice claims. To combat such excessive and expensive discovery, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure …
Forensic Microbiome Evidence: Fourth Amendment Applications And Court Acceptance, 2023 Brigham Young University Law School
Forensic Microbiome Evidence: Fourth Amendment Applications And Court Acceptance, Trason Lasley
Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology
No abstract provided.
State V. Hudgen¸ 272 A.3d 1069 (R.I. 2022)., 2023 Candidate for Juris Doctor, Roger Williams University School of Law
State V. Hudgen¸ 272 A.3d 1069 (R.I. 2022)., Judd W. Krasher
Roger Williams University Law Review
No abstract provided.
Baker V. Women & Infants Hospital Of Rhode Island, 268 A.3d 1165 (R.I. 2022), 2023 Candidate for Juris Doctor, Roger Williams University School of Law
Baker V. Women & Infants Hospital Of Rhode Island, 268 A.3d 1165 (R.I. 2022), Melissa Richi
Roger Williams University Law Review
No abstract provided.
Reframing The Dei Case, 2023 Seattle University School of Law
Reframing The Dei Case, Veronica Root Martinez
Seattle University Law Review
Corporate firms have long expressed their support for the idea that their organizations should become more demographically diverse while creating a culture that is inclusive of all members of the firm. These firms have traditionally, however, not been successful at improving demographic diversity and true inclusion within the upper echelons of their organizations. The status quo seemed unlikely to move, but expectations for corporate firms were upended after the #MeToo Movement of 2017 and 2018, which was followed by corporate support of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement in 2020. These two social movements, while distinct in many ways, forced firms to rethink …
Corporate Governance And Gender Equality: A Study Of Comply-Or-Explain Disclosure Regulation, 2023 Seattle University School of Law
Corporate Governance And Gender Equality: A Study Of Comply-Or-Explain Disclosure Regulation, Aaron A. Dhir, Sarah Kaplan, Maria Arabella Robles
Seattle University Law Review
In 2020, the Nasdaq Stock Market filed a proposal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking permission to adopt a board diversity-related disclosure requirement for its listed companies. In 2021, the SEC approved the proposal, thus entrenching Nasdaq’s position as the most significant stock exchange to date to mandate listing rules that reflect the intention of diversifying corporate boardrooms. Nasdaq’s movement into the diversity space is not the first attempt to address homogeneous boards in the U.S. In 2009, the SEC adopted a rule requiring publicly traded firms to report on whether they consider diversity in identifying director nominees. …
Gender And The Constitutional Theory Of The Firm, 2023 Seattle University School of Law
Gender And The Constitutional Theory Of The Firm, Jamee K. Moudud
Seattle University Law Review
This Article adds to the literature that has linked feminist economics to foreign trade and development. It argues that two key factors need to be in place jointly if efforts to promote gender equity are to succeed. On the one hand it argues that foreign debt is an important constraint to domestic progressive social policies of all kinds as it increases the power of international creditors who generally tend to support austerity policies. On the other hand, while alleviating the burden of foreign debt via exportpromotion policies is necessary, it is by no means a sufficient condition to promote domestic …
Judicial Ethics And The Eradication Of Racism, 2023 Seattle University School of Law
Judicial Ethics And The Eradication Of Racism, Dontay Proctor-Mills
Seattle University Law Review
In 2020, the Washington Supreme Court entrusted the legal community with working to eradicate racism from its legal system. Soon after, Washington’s Commission on Judicial Conduct (hereinafter the Commission) received a complaint about a bus ad for North Seattle College featuring King County Superior Court Judge David Keenan. Along with a photo of Judge Keenan’s face, the ad included the following language: “A Superior Court Judge, David Keenan got into law in part to advocate for marginalized communities. David’s changing the world. He started at North.” The Commission admonished Judge Keenan for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct, in part …
“What’S Past Is Prologue”: The Story Of The Sale Of The University Of Puget Sound School Of Law To Seattle University, 2023 Seattle University School of Law
“What’S Past Is Prologue”: The Story Of The Sale Of The University Of Puget Sound School Of Law To Seattle University, Annette E. Clark
Seattle University Law Review
When the Seattle University Law Review editorial staff invited me to write an updated history of the Seattle University School of Law in honor of our 50th anniversary, I planned to start the narrative with the year 1989, which was where the prior written history (authored by former Law Library Director Anita Steele and published by the Law Review) had left off. It also happens to be the year when I graduated from this law school and joined the tenure-track faculty, so 1989 seemed like a propitious place to begin. However, as I began to do the research necessary to …
Army Commander’S Role—The Judge, Jury, & Prosecutor For The Article 15, 2023 Seattle University School of Law
Army Commander’S Role—The Judge, Jury, & Prosecutor For The Article 15, Anthony Godwin
Seattle University Law Review
Service members in the armed forces are bound by a different set of rules when compared to other U.S. citizens. Some of the normal safeguards and protections that civilians enjoy are much more restrictive for military service members, and this is generally for a good reason. Such restrictions are partly due to the complex demands and needs of the United States military. Congress and the President have entrusted military commanders with special powers that enable them to handle minor violations of law without needing to go through a full judicial proceeding. Non-judicial punishments (NJP), also known as Article 15s, are …
“Statistics Are Human Beings With The Tears Wiped Away”: Utilizing Data To Develop Strategies To Reduce The Number Of Native Americans Who Go Missing, 2023 Seattle University School of Law
“Statistics Are Human Beings With The Tears Wiped Away”: Utilizing Data To Develop Strategies To Reduce The Number Of Native Americans Who Go Missing, Lori Mcpherson, Sarah Blazucki
Seattle University Law Review
On New Year’s Eve night, 2019, sixteen-year-old Selena Shelley Faye Not Afraid attended a party in Billings, Montana, about fifty miles west of her home in Hardin, Montana, near the Crow Reservation. A junior at the local high school, she was active in her community. The party carried over until the next day, and she caught a ride back toward home with friends in a van the following afternoon. When the van stopped at an interstate rest stop, Selena got out but never made it back to the van. The friends reported her missing to the police and indicated they …