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Full-Text Articles in Law
Theorizing Corroboration, Maggie Wittlin
Theorizing Corroboration, Maggie Wittlin
Faculty Scholarship
A child makes an out-of-court statement accusing an adult of abuse. That statement is important proof, but it also presents serious reliability concerns. When deciding whether it is sufficiently reliable to be admitted, should a court consider whether the child’s statement is corroborated—whether, for example, there is medical evidence of abuse? More broadly, should courts consider corroboration when deciding whether evidence is reliable enough to be admitted at trial? Judges, rule-makers, and scholars have taken significantly divergent approaches to this question and come to different conclusions.
This Article argues that there is a key problem with using corroboration to evaluate …
Trial By Preview, Bert I. Huang
Trial By Preview, Bert I. Huang
Faculty Scholarship
It has been an obsession of modern civil procedure to design ways to reveal more before trial about what will happen during trial. Litigants today, as a matter of course, are made to preview the evidence they will use. This practice is celebrated because standard theory says it should induce the parties to settle; why incur the expenses of trial, if everyone knows what will happen? Rarely noted, however, is one complication: The impact of previewing the evidence is intertwined with how well the parties know their future audience-that is, the judge or the jury who will be the finder …
A History Of Representations Of Justice: Coincident Preoccupations Of Law And Film, Jessica Silbey
A History Of Representations Of Justice: Coincident Preoccupations Of Law And Film, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
The American trial and the art of cinema share certain epistemological tendencies. Both stake claims to an authoritative form of knowledge based on the indubitable quality of observable phenomena. Both are preoccupied (sometimes to the point of self-defeat) with sustaining the authority that underlies the knowledge produced by visual perception. The American trial and art of cinema also increasingly share cultural space. Although the trial film (otherwise known as the courtroom drama) is as old as the medium of film the recent spate of popular trial films, be they fictional such as Runaway Jury or documentary such as Capturing the …
Truth Tales And Trial Films, Jessica Silbey
Truth Tales And Trial Films, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
Investigations into law and popular culture preoccupy themselves with understanding how law and popular cultural forms work together to challenge or sustain community structures, identity and power. It is inevitable at this point in our cultural history that law and popular culture are intertwined. There are too many television shows, films, popular novels and web-based entertainment to withdraw "the law" (whatever that is) from the domain of popular culture. This article takes as a given the intermixing of law and popular culture, embracing it as a new feature of our popular legal consciousness. I suggest that one result of this …