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The Nature And Purpose Of Evidence Theory, Michael S. Pardo

Vanderbilt Law Review

pproximately twenty-five years ago, Professor Richard Lempert, reflecting on the then-current state of evidence scholarship, noted a dramatic shift underway.' He described what had become a largely "moribund" field giving way to a burgeoning "new evidence scholarship." The scholarship in the moribund phase employed "a timid kind of deconstructionism with no overarching critical theory," was "seldom interesting," and any "potential utility" was "rarely realized"; Lempert proposed the following mock article title as a model representing the genre: "What's Wrong with the Twenty-Ninth Exception to the Hearsay Rule and How the Addition of Three Words Can Correct the Problem." By contrast, …