Law Commons^™

Opting Out Of Discovery, Jay Tidmarsh

Journal Articles

This Article proposes a system in which both parties are provided an opportunity to opt out of discovery. A party who opts out is immunized from dispositive motions, including a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim or a motion for summary judgment. If neither party opts out of discovery, the parties waive jury-trial rights, thus giving judges the ability to use stronger case-management powers to focus the issues and narrow discovery. If one party opts out of discovery but an opponent does not, the cost of discovery shifts to the opponent. This Article justifies this proposal in …

Yates V. United States: A Case Study In Overcriminalization, Stephen F. Smith

Journal Articles

In Yates v. United States, the Supreme Court will decide whether tossing undersized fish overboard can be prosecuted under the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, a law aimed at preventing massive frauds of the sort that led to the collapse of Enron and sent shock waves throughout the economy. Although the legal issue is narrow, the case has far-reaching significance. The Yates prosecution is a case study in the dangers posed by “overcriminalization”: the existence of multitudinous, often overlapping criminal laws that are so poorly defined that they sweep within their ambit conduct far afield from their intended target.

The …

Manual Of The Law Of Evidence, Geoffrey Bennett

Journal Articles

Reviewing: Phipson & Elliott, Manual of the Law of Evidence. 11th ed. London: Sweet & Maxwell. 1980. 376 pp.

Judges, Repulsive Evidence And The Ability To Respond, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

This is a sequel to Bullets, Bad Florins and Old Boots, which reported the attitudes of Indiana trial judges toward the trial lawyer's "arsenal of gadgetry." The opportunity presented in 1963 was the Indiana Trial Judges Seminar and a series of sessions within it on demonstrative evidence. The opportunity this year was a series of sessions on "The Court's Control Over Demonstrative Evidence" at the 1967 Indiana Judicial Conference. There were four of these sessions, all of them conducted by Judge Creighton R. Coleman of the 37th Judicial District of Michigan (Calhoun County). Each session was attended by a group …

Bullets, Bad Florins, And Old Boots: A Report Of The Indiana Trial Judges Seminar On The Judge's Control Over Demonstrative Evidence, Thomas L. Shaffer

Journal Articles

In the spring of 1963, the Indiana Judges Association, which represents about 100 of the 120 trial judges of Indiana, and the Joint Committee for the Effective Administration of Justice sponsored the first "Indiana Trial Judges Seminar" in Indianapolis. The seminar was divided into five subject areas of practical importance to trial judges, with each discussion led by a team of nationally-recognized experts and supplemented by a teacher of law who acted as reporter.

The opportunity to be a reporter on the subject area, "The Judge's Control Over Demonstrative Evidence," proved to be an uncommonly promising occasion for gathering empirical …