Law Commons^™

Are The Federal Rules Of Evidence Unconstitutional?, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

The Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) rest on an unacceptably shaky constitutional foundation. Unlike other regimes of federal rulemaking—for Civil Procedure, for Criminal Procedure, and for Appellate Procedure—the FRE rulemaking process contemplated by the Rules Enabling Act is both formally and functionally defective because Congress enacted the FRE as a statute first but purports to permit the Supreme Court to revise, repeal, and amend those laws over time, operating as a kind of supercharged administrative agency with the authority to countermand congressional statutes. Formally, this system violates the constitutionally-delineated separation of powers as announced in Chadha, Clinton, and the non-delegation …

Evidence Circuit Splits, And What To Do About Them, Daniel J. Capra, Jessica Berch

Faculty Scholarship

The Federal Rules of Evidence are designed to be simple and user-friendly — able to be deployed quickly and nimbly in the heat of trial. Despite this laudable goal, some of the rules present interpretive challenges. This Article explores approximately a dozen of the most deeply entrenched and troubling circuit splits involving Rules 407, 611, 702, 801, 803, 804, 806, and 1006.

More specifically, the circuit splits addressed are: (1) Whether the rule excluding subsequent remedial measures requires a showing that the defendant’s change was in response to the plaintiff’s injury, and also whether the rule is applicable in actions …