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Limited Admissibility And Its Limitations, Lisa Dufraimont
Limited Admissibility And Its Limitations, Lisa Dufraimont
Lisa Dufraimont
Among the challenges facing juries and judges in adjudicating cases is the obligation to use evidence for limited purposes. Evidence inadmissible for one purpose is frequently admissible for other purposes, a situation known as "limited admissibility". Where limited admissibility arises in jury trials, courts generally deliver limiting instructions outlining the inferences that can legitimately be drawn from the evidence and identifying prohibited lines of reasoning to be avoided. Limiting instructions represent an expedient solution to limited-admissibility problems, but they create obvious problems of their own. A thoughtful observer might suspect-as psychological studies confirm-that limiting instructions are likely to fail in …
Realizing The Potential Of The Principled Approach To Evidence, Lisa Dufraimont
Realizing The Potential Of The Principled Approach To Evidence, Lisa Dufraimont
Lisa Dufraimont
Ron Delisle's concern that lawyers and judges be constantly mindful of the purposes and policies underlying the rules of evidence led him to become one of the pioneers of the principled approach to evidence. This paper seeks to evaluate the extent to which the efforts of Canadian courts to incorporate principles into evidence law have alleviated the problem of the complexity of the traditional rules. Evidentiary rules are complex because they are dense or technical. Evidentiary principles are more capable of flexible and contextual application than evidentiary rules, but principles too are complex in the sense that they are less …