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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Disappointing History Of Science In The Courtroom: Frye, Daubert, And The Ongoing Crisis Of “Junk Science” In Criminal Trials, Jim Hilbert
Faculty Scholarship
Twenty-five years ago, the Supreme Court decided one of the most important cases concerning the use of science in courtrooms. In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals , the Court addressed widespread concerns that courts were admitting unreliable scientific evidence. In addition, lower courts lacked clarity on the status of the previous landmark case for courtroom science, Frye v. United States. In the years leading up to the Daubert decision, policy-makers and legal observers sounded the alarm about the rise in the use of "junk science" by so-called expert witnesses. Some critics went so far as to suggest that American businesses …
Cell Phones, Brain Cancer, And Scientific Outliers In Murray V. Motorola, David H. Kaye
Cell Phones, Brain Cancer, And Scientific Outliers In Murray V. Motorola, David H. Kaye
Journal Articles
Pending before the District of Columbia's highest court in a case asking whether cell phones can cause cancer is whether to replace the jurisdiction's venerable Frye standard for reviewing the admissibility of scientific evidence with the approach adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow. The author analyzes one aspect of the two evidentiary standards that leads him to question the trial judge's suggestion in Murray v. Motorola that adopting the Daubert perspective would allow greater leeway in excluding the plaintiff's evidence.
Brain Scans As Evidence: Truths, Proofs, Lies, And Lessons, Owen D. Jones, Francis X. Shen
Brain Scans As Evidence: Truths, Proofs, Lies, And Lessons, Owen D. Jones, Francis X. Shen
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This contribution to the Brain Sciences in the Courtroom Symposium identifies and discusses issues important to admissibility determinations when courts confront brain-scan evidence. Through the vehicle of the landmark 2010 federal criminal trial U.S. v. Semrau (which considered, for the first time, the admissibility of brain scans for lie detection purposes) this article highlights critical evidentiary issues involving: 1) experimental design; 2) ecological and external validity; 3) subject compliance with researcher instructions; 4) false positives; and 5) drawing inferences about individuals from group data. The article’s lessons are broadly applicable to the new wave of neurolaw cases now being seen …
Does Frye Or Daubert Matter? A Study Of Scientific Admissibility Standards, Edward K. Cheng, Albert Yoon
Does Frye Or Daubert Matter? A Study Of Scientific Admissibility Standards, Edward K. Cheng, Albert Yoon
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Nearly every treatment of scientific evidence begins with a faithful comparison between the Frye and Daubert standards. Since 1993, jurists and legal scholars have spiritedly debated which standard is preferable and whether particular states should adopt one standard or the other. These efforts beg the question: Does a state's choice of scientific admissibility standard matter? A growing number of scholars suspect that the answer is no. Under this theory, the import of the Supreme Court's Daubert decision was not in its doctrinal standard, but rather in the general consciousness it raised about the problems of unreliable scientific evidence. This Article …
Can Fingerprints Lie?: Re-Weighing Fingerprint Evidence In Criminal Jury Trials, Tamara F. Lawson
Can Fingerprints Lie?: Re-Weighing Fingerprint Evidence In Criminal Jury Trials, Tamara F. Lawson
Articles
This article discusses fingerprint evidence and its use in criminal jury trials. It is commonly thought that fingerprints "never lie"; however, this article reveals the little known fact that the "science" of fingerprint identification has never been empirically tested or proven to be reliable. It further exposes the seldom-discussed issue of fingerprint misidentification and latent print examiner error. The article explains the importance of fingerprint evidence and its extensive use in all phases of the criminal justice system. Specifically, the article plays out the dramatic courtroom scenario of incriminating fingerprints being found at a crime scene and matching the accused …
Choice And Boundary Problems In Logerquist, Hummert, And Kumho Tire, David H. Kaye
Choice And Boundary Problems In Logerquist, Hummert, And Kumho Tire, David H. Kaye
Journal Articles
This article, part of a symposium on the opinion of the Arizona Supreme Court in Logerquist v. McVey, questions that court’s rationales for refusing to apply heightened scrutiny to psychiatric testimony about the retrieval of repressed memories. It also challenges the court’s use of a “personal observations” exception to the heightened scrutiny standard of Frye v. United States. It proposes that a better solution to problems of scientific and expert evidence would be to adopt a sliding scale that attends to the use to which the evidence is put and the degree to which it has been shown to be …
Kumho Tire Co. V. Carmichael: The Supreme Court Follows Up On The Daubert Test, Martin A. Schwartz
Kumho Tire Co. V. Carmichael: The Supreme Court Follows Up On The Daubert Test, Martin A. Schwartz
Scholarly Works
No abstract provided.
Iola And Daubert (Symposium: The Supreme Court And Local Government Law: The 1997-98 Term), Leon D. Lazer
Iola And Daubert (Symposium: The Supreme Court And Local Government Law: The 1997-98 Term), Leon D. Lazer
Scholarly Works
No abstract provided.
Meta-Evidence: Do We Need It?, Christopher B. Mueller
Meta-Evidence: Do We Need It?, Christopher B. Mueller
Publications
No abstract provided.