Evidence Commons^™

Infiltrating The Black Box: Expanding The No-Impeachment Rule To Protect Defendants From Pervasive Juror Bias, Jordan Whitfield

Arkansas Law Review

In the United States, a criminal defendant is entitled to “a fair trial but not a perfect one, for there are no perfect trials.” However, defendants are also guaranteed the right to an impartial jury. While perfection within a jury is “an untenable goal,” a system that allows for juror bias during deliberations to go undetected threatens a defendant’s most crucial constitutional rights. Thus, when juror bias threatens to interfere with a defendant’s rights to a fair trial and impartial jury, there is a prevalent need for the judicial system to step in and mitigate the effects of juror bias. …

Identifying The Guilty, Protecting The Innocent: Amending The Federal Rules Of Evidence To Address Admissibility Of Eyewitness Identification, Louisa M. A. Heiny

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Mistaken eyewitness identification is among the most common factors in wrongful conviction cases. Indeed, hundreds of innocent defendants have been convicted for a crime they did not commit, their fate sealed by an eyewitness who convincingly, but mistakenly, testified, “That’s the one!”

Scientific researchers have documented the fallibility of eyewitness identification for decades. Their collective work has produced recommendations for eyewitness identification reform, focusing on procedural problems most likely to result in mistaken identification. The law in this area, however, has not kept pace with the science. Rather than representing a cohesive series of safeguards against inaccurate eyewitness identifications, federal …

Through A Glass Darkly: How Securities Disclosures Give A Distorted View Of The Economy, Gerald F. Davis

Seattle University Law Review

Our understanding of the American economy often relies on stylized facts derived from mandatory disclosures by listed corporations. Data vendors like Standard & Poor’s vacuum up 10Ks and proxy statements into databases, and scholars distill these into tentative maps. This may have been adequate for a postwar economy centered on asset-heavy manufacturers, but it is increasingly out of step with an information-based economy. Companies listed on the stock market are fewer in number and less representative than they were, light in tangible assets and people, and heavy on IP. Basic facts such as what industry they are in are increasingly …

The Challenge That The Advent Of Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Tools Poses To The Procedures For Determining The Existence Of The Preliminary Facts That Condition The Admissibility Of Items Of Evidence, Edward J. Imwinkelried

Marquette Law Review

“[A]d quæstionem facti non respondent judices; . . . ad quæstionem juris not respondent juratores.” Judges do not answer questions of fact; jurors do not answer questions of law.

The jury is a central institution in the American level infrastructure. The Sixth and Seventh Amendments elevate the jury trial right to constitutional status. Of course, when a judge presides at a jury trial, the question that naturally arises is the division of decision-making labor between judge and jury. In the past few decades, the Supreme Court’s Apprendi v. New Jersey line of authority has expanded the jury’s authority to decide …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Corporate Scenarios: Drawing Lessons From History, Madison Condon

Seattle University Law Review

As corporations are increasingly pressed to reveal information about their exposure to climate-related risks, they are often asked to undertake and disclose the outcome of “scenario analysis.” In this exercise, corporations, including financial institutions, examine how their business would fare under different pathways the future may take. One oft-used scenario, for example, is the International Energy Agency’s “Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Energy Sector.” This Essay presents a history of the use of scenarios as a corporate planning tool, particularly in the oil industry, arguing that it is key for understanding our present moment and the role of …

Shareholder Expression In A Time Of Heightened Political Tension, Aaron A. Dhir

Seattle University Law Review

In this article, I provide context for my forthcoming research project on shareholder proposals and racial equity audits. Since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, progressive shareholder actors have increasingly used the proposal mechanism to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice-related goals. These proposals have frequently gone beyond requesting the usual corporate fare of diversity trainings, intersectionality workshops, affinity groups, etc. Instead, a more ambitious type of proposal asks corporate America to conduct racial equity audits, defined as “an independent, objective and holistic analysis of a company’s policies, practices, products, services and efforts to combat systemic racism …

Corporate Governance Speech, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

The State has always regulated the intra-firm communications that make corporate governance possible, most commonly by mandating disclosures of information by a corporation to its shareholders. Some such laws are labeled “securities regulation,” but securities regulation is a broad category that extends to speech by actors who are outside the corporate enterprise as well. Also, the conventional securities regulation category does not capture all such laws; other examples, including informationforcing mandates, can be found in state corporate law. This Article uses the term “corporate governance speech” to describe the communications among shareholders, directors, and officers through which corporate governance is …

Dark Accounting Matter, Colleen Honigsberg

Seattle University Law Review

Physicists calculate that approximately 85% of the matter in the universe is composed of “dark matter” that “does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is therefore difficult to detect.” The S&P 500 currently trades at a price-to-book value of 4.2, suggesting that book value accounts for less than 20% of the S&P 500’s market value. The remaining 80% appears nowhere in these firms’ balance sheets—it is invisible to contemporary accounting techniques and constitutes “dark accounting matter.”

Some “dark accounting matter” is composed of factors commonly described as components of “ESG.” Human capital, for example, is an intangible asset …

The Employees’ Dilemma: Balancing Internal Reporting, Whistleblowing, And Insider Trading Risks, Geeyoung Min

Seattle University Law Review

The Essay examines how recent developments in insider trading regulations and whistleblower reward programs can lead to unintended and counterproductive results of discouraging employees from using internal reporting channels within corporate compliance programs. While the presence of a robust and well-functioning corporate compliance program is a critical factor both in mitigating the level of public enforcement actions against companies and in protecting corporate managers from liability in private litigation, these programs often provide little incentive for employees to report potential misconduct internally.

Corporate compliance programs are designed to promote the upward information flow within the company, which is essential for …

How The Antidiscrimination Law Of Commercial Transactions Really Works, Helen Norton

Seattle University Law Review

A variety of businesses now cite 303 Creative when seeking First Amendment protection for their refusal to serve certain customers based on those customers’ protected class status. How this litigation will play out remains to be seen. But future courts need not, and should not, repeat the 303 Creative Court’s misunderstanding of how the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions actually works.

Part I of this Essay explains the Court’s longstanding understanding of the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions, and then describes the Court’s failure to engage with this precedent in 303 Creative. Part II then identifies the 303 Creative decision’s …

Unmasking The Rhetoric Of Reform – The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023 In Context, Pranav Verma

National Law School of India Review

This legislative comment is a critical analysis of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023 (‘BSA’), which has replaced the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (‘IEA’). It analyses the major changes brought in by the BSA and discusses their implications. It further highlights the existing interpretive disputes within the IEA that the BSA leaves unaddressed. The BSA makes only a few substantive changes in improvement to the IEA, such as streamlining the rules on electronic evidence and expanding the scope of secondary evidence. Apart from this, most changes pertain to the renumbering of existing provisions and the deletion of obsolete colonial references. These …

Police Gatekeeping, Emily M. Poor

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

The role of policing in American society is more pervasive (and less visible) than many acknowledge. Police do not just patrol, arrest, and keep peace – they also gatekeep. Many and varied ostensibly non-criminal processes rely on police fact-finding to adjudicate claims, establish eligibility for resources, and take adverse action against individuals. This Article examines the phenomenon of police gatekeeping, both as a practical barrier to resources and remedies and as a hegemonic mechanism to construct the social conception of truth.

Recognizing the ways in which civil society relies upon police as gatekeepers of both practical resources and the social …

Green Dividends: A Case Study In Green Dividends And The Conditions For Private Ordering Solutions, Anne M. Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

This Essay introduces a novel private ordering solution to facilitate corporate investments in pro-social and environmental initiatives: Green dividends. Green dividends are an optional increase in shareholder dividends that are returned to the company to be reinvested in environmental initiatives or kept by a shareholder.

Green dividends pose an alternative to the current gridlocked debate that corporations can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and shouldn’t even try to act in pro-social or environmental ways. Turning the common refrains on their head converts each narrative into an element for a successful private ordering solution: authority, accountability, shareholder buy-in, and government- backed enforcement. With Green …

Does Climate Disclosure Work To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Emerging Evidence Suggests Cautious Optimism, Cynthia A. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Significant regulatory resources have been spent developing global, voluntary climate and sustainability disclosure standards, such as the TCFD, TNRD, and ISSB’s Sustainability and Climate Disclosure standards, or domestically required disclosures, such as in the EU and in the U.S. Thus, it is important to evaluate whether this disclosure, particularly voluntary, qualitative disclosure, will have the power to shift the allocation of capital, will have a significant effect on the management of climate risk within firms, and ultimately will reduce climate change risk and biodiversity loss.

In this Article, several interrelated questions will be discussed. First, what does the empirical evidence …

Affording Oral Tradition Evidence Due Weight Before The International Court Of Justice, Terrence Neal

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Oral traditions are irreplaceable sources of historical information, particularly with regard to Indigenous Peoples’ histories and cultures. However, when states have submitted oral traditions as evidence of historical practices, events, and circumstances in cases before the International Court of Justice (“Court”), the Court has been reluctant to afford them significant weight. This Article, which is the first detailed study on the Court’s treatment of oral traditions, examines whether the Court is failing to provide them due or appropriate weight. Based on historical, archaeological, and anthropological research, it establishes that oral traditions can be as reliable as written documents for reconstructing …

Admitting Science: Problems With Current Admissibility Standards, William O'Donohue, Sneha Gupta

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Attorneys use expert testimony to advance legal positions in courtrooms. Because expert testimony can have tremendous influence over judges and juries, it is admitted only if it meets specific admissibility standards, i.e., Frye and Daubert. These standards provide different admissibility criteria, have been adopted by distinct sets of jurisdictions, and, we argue, are of questionable validity. These standards are attempts to ensure that only knowledge is admissible and are, then, essentially an epistemic matter. Science serves as a proxy for knowledge because science is the epistemic process that has been successful at generating knowledge. However, both epistemology and the philosophy …

State V. Mosley, 320 A.3d 942 (R.I. 2024), Alison Brochu

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Guilty Pleas Matter: Waivers And The Forgotten Solemnity Of A Sacred Process, Julian A. Cook Iii

UF Law Faculty Publications

Approximately 98% of federal cases are resolved by means of a guilty plea. Thus, it is the guilty plea hearing, not the jury trial, that is the heart and lungs of our criminal justice system. Given the frequency of its use, coupled with the deeply impactful personal consequences that necessarily accompany a conviction, district courts play a critical evaluative and safeguarding function. As famously stated by the Supreme Court in Brady v. United States, the decision to plead guilty “is a grave and solemn act to be accepted only with care and discernment . . . .”

Guilty Pleas …

Minimal Rationality And The Law Of Evidence, Ronald J. Allen, Michael S. Pardo, William J. Lawrence, Christopher K. Smiciklas

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

For more than a century, one of the pillars upon which the law of evidence was thought to rest is that the primary (although by no means exclusive) objective of the law of evidence is to further accurate fact-finding by maximizing the rationality of the evidentiary process. The crux of this pillar is that the law of evidence increases rationality (and thereby increases accuracy) through admissibility rules that (1) require reliable evidence, and (2) behave paternalistically toward jurors and their cognitive abilities. This Article aims to supplant this pillar by showing that the law of evidence pursues minimal, not maximal, …

Generative Ai As Courtroom Evidence: A Practical Guide, Neal Feigenson, Brian Carney

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trust, But Verify: The Case For Abolishing The Outlier Authentication Provisions Of The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Sydney A. Beckman

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Role And Impact Of Forensic Evidence In The Prosecution Of Homicide Cases In The U.S., Afrah Dakhilallah A. Altubait

Theses and Dissertations

The role of forensic evidence in the criminal justice process is an important topic that is significant from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The present study is dedicated to a critical analysis of the role of this evidence in the U.S. criminal justice process with a focus on its significance in homicide cases. Specifically, this dissertation examines the implications of using DNA and fingerprint evidence for convictions in U.S. homicide cases by analyzing the role of DNA and fingerprint evidence in the prosecution of “hot” and “cold” homicide cases, discussing the main ways in which forensic evidence assists with prosecuting …

Understanding Federal Rule Of Evidence 104(B) On Building Walls And Missing Bricks, Len Niehoff, Shannon Hickey

Articles

We use individual pieces of evidence to construct our cases, recognizing that no one of them, taken in isolation, suffices to get the job done. As Professor McCormick famously said of evidence, “a brick is not a wall.” Federal Rule of Evidence 104(b) explains the logical relationship between those various pieces of evidence and how they help us build our proofs. Or perhaps we should say that the rule tries to explain it, without much success.

State V. Liverpool, 314 A.3d 948 (R.I. 2024), Ryan Claudino

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Armour V. Bader, 316 A.3d 1164 (R.I. 2024), Caroline Stanton Chlaupek

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

State V. Finnigan, 316 A.3d 1190 (R.I. 2024), Nikki Nappi

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

To Free A Predator: The Flawed Rationale For Overturning Bill Cosby’S Conviction, Michael C. Kovac

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Virtual Court Proceedings And Their Effect On Criminal Defendants’ Rights, Hunter J. Phillips

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

This Comment examines whether implementing virtual evidentiary proceedings diminishes a criminal defendant’s Constitutional rights. Part One introduces the Confrontation Clause and judicial interpretations that shape its modern legal view.

Part One also introduces the importance of face-to-face testimony and how the Confrontation Clause is founded upon that principle. Part One concludes by offering psychological research that highlights the im-portance of face-to-face proceedings that allow for effective criminal proceedings. Part Two introduces legislation that hinders defendants’ Confrontation rights and critically analyzes that legislation. Part Three argues for the abandonment of virtual criminal proceedings and highlights other factors that should be considered …

Command And Consequence: Reassessing King David’S Military Decisions In The Uriah Affair – A Legal And Ethical Analysis In The Context Of Modern Legal Theory, Jonathan Hasson, Oded Mudrik, Abraham Tennenbaum

Touro Law Review

This study critically reevaluates King David's command in 2 Samuel 11 and 12 to place Uriah the Hittite in the battle's frontlines, resulting in his death, through the contemporary lens of military law and ethics. By juxtaposing the ancient narrative with modern legal doctrines, it investigates the complexities of command responsibility and the intersection of personal motives in military orders. Focusing on the interplay between David's personal entanglements with Bathsheba and his official capacity as a military leader, the analysis navigates the ethical quandaries and legal ramifications of his decisions. This piece methodically dissects the Biblical text and contemporaneous legal …