Law Commons^™

Pleading And Proving Foreign Law In The Age Of Plausibility Pleading, Roger M. Michalski

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Evidence, John E. Hall Jr., W. Scott Henwood

Mercer Law Review

The biggest story in Georgia Evidence law this year is undoubtedly the Georgia General Assembly's decision to align Georgia's evidence code with the Federal Rules of Evidence. Proponents of House Bill 24 describe the former rules, many of which have been on the books for more than 150 years, as archaic and inconsistent. Paul S. Milich, professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law and the reporter for the State Bar of Georgia committee that proposed the new rules of evidence for Georgia, described the way the outdated rules impeded the modern practice of law in Georgia: "Our …

Dancing With The Big Boys: Georgia Adopts (Most Of) The Federal Rules Of Evidence, David N. Dreyer, F. Beau Howard, Amy M. Leitch

Mercer Law Review

Georgia has become the forty-fourth state to model its new evidence rules on the Federal Rules of Evidence. The new code will go into effect on January 1, 2013, 150 years from when Georgia's first legal code was published. Passage of the 2013 Georgia Evidence Code did not come easy, but was a product of years of debate, compromise, and vetting from legislators, the judiciary, academia, and members and groups of the practicing bar. The new code is largely derived from the Federal Rules of Evidence, but Georgia has retained a significant amount of evidence rules from its prior code …

Constitutional Law—It Wasn’T Me! Zinger V. State And Arkansas’S Unconstitutional Approach To Third-Party Exculpatory Evidence. Zinger V. State, 313 Ark. 70, 852 S.W.2d 320 (1993)., Bourgon B. Reynolds

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Plea Bargaining, Discovery, And The Intractable Problem Of Impeachment Disclosures, R. Michael Cassidy

Vanderbilt Law Review

Several recent high-profile cases have illustrated flaws with the government's discovery practices in criminal cases and have put prosecutors across the country on the defensive about their compliance with disclosure obligations. The conviction of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens on ethics charges was set aside after it was revealed that federal prosecutors withheld notes of an interview with a key government witness; one member of the Stevens prosecution team who was under investigation for contempt subsequently committed suicide. The Supreme Court remanded a double murder case from Tennessee for potential resentencing after it was revealed that state prosecutors had withheld …

J.D.B. V. North Carolina And The Reasonable Person, Christopher Jackson

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

This Term, the Supreme Court was presented with a prime opportunity to provide some much-needed clarification on a "backdrop" issue of law-one of many topics that arises in a variety of legal contexts, but is rarely analyzed on its own terms. In J.D.B. v. North Carolina, the Court considered whether age was a relevant factor in determining if a suspect is "in custody" for Miranda purposes, and thus must have her rights read to her before being questioned by the police. Miranda, like dozens of other areas of law, employs a reasonable person test on the custodial question: it asks …

Injecting Law Student Drama Into The Classroom: Transforming An E-Discovery Class (Or Any Law School Class) With A Complex, Student-Generated Simulation, Paula Schaefer

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Unpredictable And Inconsistent: Nevada's Expert Witness Standard After Higgs V. State, Ryan A. Henry

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Tangible "Intangibles" And Other Mysteries: A Critique Of The D.C. Circuit's Expansion Of Work Product Doctrine In United States V. Deloitte Llp, Brian L. Blaylock

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Evidence, W. Randall Bassett, Susan M. Clare

Mercer Law Review

Although the 2010 term of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit had its share of controversial cases, the court's evidentiary rulings were few in number and moderate in scope. As it has in recent years, the court relied heavily on unpublished decisions to resolve cases without creating binding precedent; thus there were no major alterations to the law of evidence requiring practitioners to run to the nearest volume of the Federal Reporter. As explained in previous iterations of this Survey, the court cautions that its "[u]npublished opinions are not considered binding precedent." As a result,

The …

Brain Scans As Evidence: Truths, Proofs, Lies, And Lessons, Francis X. Shen, Owen D. Jones

Mercer Law Review

This Brain Sciences in the Courtroom Symposium is both timely and important. Given recently developed and rapidly improving brain imaging techniques that enable non-invasive detection of brain activity, civil and criminal courts increasingly encounter attorneys proffering brain scans as evidence.' The reason is simple. In addition to caring about how people act-such as when they cause a person's death or sign a will-the legal system's inquiries frequently turn on determining what people were thinking, or were capable of thinking, when they acted.

In criminal law, for example, the same act can yield anything from mere probation to decades in …

Functional Magnetic Resonance Detection Of Deception: Great As Fundamental Research, Inadequate As Substantive Evidence, Charles Adelsheim

Mercer Law Review

Essential to the law's pursuit of truth, justice, and the efficient resolution of conflict is assessing the veracity of statements made by individuals both in and out of court. In this judicial context, untruthful statements can be, and no doubt are, made regularly by plaintiffs, defendants, and other witnesses. Humans are generally very skilled at deceiving others, yet they are poor at detecting deception. Because of this disparity, there is a strong demand for reliable scientific techniques to detect deception. The most popular technique is currently the polygraph examination. However, polygraph-based evidence is inadmissible as substantive evidence in nearly all …

Serendipitous Timing: The Coincidental Emergence Of The New Brain Science And The Advent Of An Epistemological Approach To Determining The Admissibility Of Expert Testimony, Edward J. Imwinkelried

Mercer Law Review

This is an exciting time for students of the human brain. Worldwide there has never been such intense interest in and extensive research into the brain. Techniques for studying the brain are proliferating. By way of example, one group of scientists is employing electroencephalography (EEG) as a tool to investigate the brain's operations. Some of these researchers have utilized EEG to identify brain damage; others, including Dr. Lawrence Farwell of Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, are endeavoring to adapt EEG technology to the detection of deception. Another group of scientists has focused its research on BOLD fMRI (Blood Oxygen Level Dependent functional …

Proposal To Reverse The View Of A Confession: From Key Evidence Requiring Corroboration To Corroboration For Key Evidence, Boaz Sangero, Mordechai Halpert

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Both case law and legal literature have recognized that all, and not just clearly statistical, evidence is probabilistic. Therefore, we have much to learn from the laws of probability with regard to the evaluation of evidence in a criminal trial. The present Article focuses on the confession. First, we review legal and psychological literature and show that the probability of a false confession and, consequently, a wrongful conviction, is far from insignificant. In light of this, we warn against the cognitive illusion, stemming from the fallacy of the transposed conditional, which is liable to mislead the trier of fact in …

State V. Harden: Muddying The Waters Of Self-Defense Law In West Virginia, Devin C. Daines

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Through The Lens Of Federal Evidence Rule 403: An Examination Of Eyewitness Identification Expert Testimony Admissibility In The Federal Circuit Courts, Lauren Tallent

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Contains Cover, Table Of Contents, Letter From The Editor, And Masthead, Francis C. Oroszlan

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

The Richmond Journal of Law and Technology is proud to present its second issue of the 2010–2011 academic year.

The Admissibility Of Electronic Evidence Under The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Jonathan D. Frieden, Leigh M. Murray

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Following the December 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, much has been written about the discovery of electronically-stored information.

Technology-Assisted Review In E-Discovery Can Be More Effective And More Efficient Than Exhaustive Manual Review, Maura R. Grossman, Gordon V. Cormack

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

E-discovery processes that use automated tools to prioritize and select documents for review are typically regarded as potential cost-savers – but inferior alternatives – to exhaustive manual review, in which a cadre of reviewers assesses every document for responsiveness to a production request, and for privilege. This Article offers evidence that such technology-assisted processes, while indeed more efficient, can also yield results superior to those of exhaustive manual review, as measured by recall and precision, as well as F1, a summary measure combining both recall and precision. The evidence derives from an analysis of data collected from the TREC 2009 …

Federal Rule Of Evidence 502: Has It Lived Up To Its Potential?, Paul W. Grimm, Lisa Yurwit Bergstrom, Matthew P. Kraeuter

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Nothing causes litigators greater anxiety than the possibility of doing, or failing to do, something during a civil case that waives attorney– client privilege or work-product protection. Attend any seminar, webcast, podcast, or other continuing legal education course dealing with the discovery of electronically stored information (“ESI”) and you are sure to hear about this concern and how to mitigate it.

Spoliation Of Electronic Evidence: Sanctions Versus Advocacy, Charles W. Adams

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Article proposes that courts should refrain from imposing adverse inference jury instructions as sanctions for the spoliation of evidence. This proposal bears some similarity to the approach taken twenty years ago by the 1993 amendments to Rule 11, which constrained courts' ability to sanction. Instead of imposing an adverse jury instruction as a sanction for spoliation of evidence, courts should allow evidence of spoliation to be admitted at trial if a reasonable jury could find that spoliation had occurred and if the spoliation was relevant to a material issue. If a court allows the introduction of evidence of spoliation …

Confrontation And Domestic Violence Post-Davis: Is There And Should There Be A Doctrinal Exception, Eleanor Simon

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Close to five million intimate partner rapes and physical assaults are perpetrated against women in the United States annually. Domestic violence accounts for twenty percent of all non-fatal crime experienced by women in this county. Despite these statistics, many have argued that in the past six years the Supreme Court has "put a target on [the] back" of the domestic violence victim, has "significantly eroded offender accountability in domestic violence prosecutions," and has directly instigated a substantial decline in domestic violence prosecutions. The asserted cause is the Court's complete and groundbreaking re-conceptualization of the Sixth Amendment right of a criminal …

Four Years Later: How The 2006 Amendments To The Federal Rules Have Reshaped The E-Discovery Landscape And Are Revitalizing The Civil Justice System, Bennett B. Borden, Monica Mccarroll, Brian C. Vick, Lauren M. Wheeling

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

The 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which were enacted to address the potentially immense burden involved in the discovery of electronically-stored information (“ESI”), set in motion a process that is revitalizing the primary purpose of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure adopted nearly seventy years earlier: “to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action and proceeding.” One of the principal means through which the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure achieve this purpose is by allowing for the discovery of “any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense.” The reasoning …

Rethinking Jurisdictional Discovery Under The Hague Evidence Convention, Kathleen B. Gilchrist

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

When a federal court in the United States compels the discovery of information located abroad to determine whether it has jurisdiction over the defendant, the court can apply the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or the Hague Evidence Convention. This Note argues that the approach taken by most courts--applying the balancing test formulated by the Supreme Court in Societe Nationale Industrielle Aerospatiale v. U.S. District Court and favoring application of the Federal Rules--is misguided. Courts should apply the Evidence Convention more often in jurisdictional discovery disputes. They can do so under the existing legal framework with one of three holdings: …

Misinterpreted Justice: Problems With The Use Of Islamic Legal Experts In U.S. Trial Courts, Peter W. Beauchamp

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Contains Cover, Table Of Contents, Letter From The Editor, And Masthead, Francis C. Oroszlan

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

The Richmond Journal of Law and Technology is proud to present the fourth issue of the 2010–2011 academic year. In this issue, we explore privacy law in the context of online social networking, online advertising and tort reform. Additionally, this issue examines mandatory disclosure of trade secrets as a component of offshore oil drilling regulation and evaluates certain criticisms levied against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Introduction: Contains Cover, Table Of Contents, Letter From The Editor, And Masthead, Ian Lambeets

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

The Richmond Journal of Law and Technology is proud to present its first issue of the 2011-2012 academic year. The Journal strives to discuss new and emerging issues that fall squarely at the intersection of technology and the law. Another year goes by and technology continues to advance, and not surprisingly, further immerses itself into our daily lives. The Journal believes it is our mission to recognize the practical effects the growth of technology has on society and to promote a relevant and timely discussion on these topics.

Law In The Age Of Exabytes: Some Further Thoughts On ‘Information Inflation’ And Current Issues In E-Discovery Search, Jason R. Baron

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

In 2007, in the pages of this Journal, George L. Paul and I posed a question to the legal profession at large, to wit: can the legal system adapt to the new reality of an era of rapid inflation in the amount of electronically stored information (ESI) at issue in civil litigation? After surveying the history of technological innovation that led to an explosion of new data, we proceeded to discuss various legal strategies for success in our current inflationary epoch. These strategies included: consideration of new and emerging ways in which to think about search and information retrieval in …

Section 1983 & The Age Of Innocence: The Supreme Court Carves A Procedural Loophole For Post-Conviction Dna Testing In Skinner V. Switzer, Gabriel A. Carrera

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

No Good Whistle Goes Unpunished: Can We Protect European Antitrust Leniency Applications From Discovery?, Constanza Nicolosi

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

In recent years, the most successful tool in the antitrust arsenal of the European Commission and the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice has proven to be leniency programs, which provide full immunity from fines to the first cartel-member that confesses its participation in the conspiracy. Even though European and U.S. leniency programs are fairly similar to one another, procedural differences may undermine their effectiveness. It has long been argued that potential discovery of corporate statements accompanying the leniency application before the Commission in subsequent proceedings in the United States would put the firms that cooperated with the …