Preventing A (Replication) Crisis In The Courtroom, 2023 University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law
Preventing A (Replication) Crisis In The Courtroom, Kaitlin Mccormick-Huhn
Nevada Law Journal
No abstract provided.
“Hey, Google, What Are The Elements Of Homicide By Vehicle In The First Degree?”: The Supreme Court Of Georgia Reinforces The Prohibition On Extrajudicial Information Considered By A Jury In Criminal Trials, 2023 Mercer University School of Law
“Hey, Google, What Are The Elements Of Homicide By Vehicle In The First Degree?”: The Supreme Court Of Georgia Reinforces The Prohibition On Extrajudicial Information Considered By A Jury In Criminal Trials, Savannah Hall
Mercer Law Review
In a criminal trial, the presentation of evidence and the instruction of law to the jury are of crucial importance to ensure that a person is only convicted based upon sound understandings of the factual and legal framework under which they were charged. The complexities surrounding the rules of evidence are in place so that jurors are only allowed to consider the facts and testimony permissible under the rules of evidence, meaning it is of utmost importance for the jury to consider solely those things which a judge deems admissible, relevant, and helpful to understanding the case. However, given the …
The Long Road To Justice: Why State Courts Should Lower The Evidentiary Burden For Proving Racialized Traffic Stops And Adopt The Exclusionary Rule As A Remedy For Equal Protection Violations, 2023 University of Washington School of Law
The Long Road To Justice: Why State Courts Should Lower The Evidentiary Burden For Proving Racialized Traffic Stops And Adopt The Exclusionary Rule As A Remedy For Equal Protection Violations, Abby M. Fink
Washington Journal of Social & Environmental Justice
Racist and brutal policing continues to pervade the criminal legal system. Black and brown people who interact with the police consistently face unequal targeting and treatment. Routine traffic stops are especially dangerous and harmful and can lead to death. Under Whren, a police officer’s racist motivations or implicit bias towards a driver do not influence the constitutionality of a traffic stop. An officer only needs to show there was probable cause to believe a traffic stop occurred. Although the unconstitutionality of pre-textual traffic stops has been widely explored since Whren, both federal and state courts have struggled to find legal …
The Owls: Some Difficulties In Judging Scientific Consensus, 2023 Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
The Owls: Some Difficulties In Judging Scientific Consensus, Harry Collins
Villanova Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Adversity Of Adversarialism: How The Consensus Rule Reproduces The Expert Paradox, 2023 Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
The Adversity Of Adversarialism: How The Consensus Rule Reproduces The Expert Paradox, Martin Weinel
Villanova Law Review
No abstract provided.
The "Crisis Of Expertise" Reaches The Courtroom: An Introduction To The Symposium On, And A Response To, Edward Cheng's Consensus Rule, 2023 Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
The "Crisis Of Expertise" Reaches The Courtroom: An Introduction To The Symposium On, And A Response To, Edward Cheng's Consensus Rule, David S. Caudill
Villanova Law Review
No abstract provided.
Embracing Deference, 2023 Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
Embracing Deference, Edward K. Cheng, Elodie O. Currier, Payton B. Hampton
Villanova Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Consensus Rule: Judges, Jurors, And Admissibility Hearings, 2023 Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
The Consensus Rule: Judges, Jurors, And Admissibility Hearings, Robert Evans
Villanova Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Consensus Rule: Lessons From The Regulatory World, 2023 Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
The Consensus Rule: Lessons From The Regulatory World, Wendy Wagner
Villanova Law Review
No abstract provided.
What A Waste! An Evaluation Of Federal And State Medical And Biohazard Waste Regulations During The Covid-19 Pandemic And Their Impact On Environmental Justice, 2023 Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
What A Waste! An Evaluation Of Federal And State Medical And Biohazard Waste Regulations During The Covid-19 Pandemic And Their Impact On Environmental Justice, Samantha Newman
Villanova Environmental Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Embracing Deference, 2023 Vanderbilt University Law School
Embracing Deference, Edward K. Cheng, Elodie O. Currier, Payton B. Hampton
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
A fundamental conceptual problem has long dogged discussions about scientific and other expert evidence in the courtroom. In American law, the problem was most famously posed by Judge Learned Hand, who asked: "[H]ow can the jury judge between two statements each founded upon an experience confessedly foreign in kind to their own? It is just because they are incompetent for such a task that the expert is necessary at all." This puzzle, sometimes known as the "expert paradox," is quite general. It applies not only to the jury as factfinder, but also to the judge as gate- keeper under the …
Something Doesn’T Add Up: Solving Dna Forensic Science Statistical Fallacies In Trial Testimony, 2023 Vanderbilt University
Something Doesn’T Add Up: Solving Dna Forensic Science Statistical Fallacies In Trial Testimony, Kendall Brooke Kilberger
Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law
While the limitations of traditional forensic sciences are generally recognized, the presentation of DNA forensic science statistical testimony has widely evaded criticism. This lack of oversight has allowed four DNA forensic science statistical fallacies to plague the legal system: providing statistics without empirical support, the individualization fallacy, the prosecutor’s fallacy, and the defense attorney’s fallacy. These fallacies pose a significant risk to the preservation of justice, as erroneous DNA forensic science statistical testimony plays a critical role in wrongfully convicting innocent defendants.
This Note suggests administering standard jury instructions every time DNA forensic science statistical testimony is presented during trial. …
Reforming Prior Conviction Impeachment, 2023 University of Connecticut School of Law
Reforming Prior Conviction Impeachment, Julia Simon-Kerr, Anna Roberts
Faculty Articles and Papers
No abstract provided.
Law's Credibility Problem, 2023 University of Connecticut School of Law
Law's Credibility Problem, Julia Simon-Kerr
Faculty Articles and Papers
Credibility determinations often seal people's fates. They can determine outcomes at trial; they condition the provision of benefits, like social security; and they play an increasingly dispositive role in immigration proceedings. Yet there is no stable definition of credibility in the law. Courts and agencies diverge at the most basic definitional level in their use of the category.
Consider a real-world example. An immigration judge denies asylum despite the applicant's plausible and unrefuted account of persecution in their country of origin. The applicant appeals, pointing to the fact that Congress enacted a "rebuttable presumption of credibility" for asylum-seekers "on appeal." …
Beliefs And Probabilities: The Errors That Remain Are Mine Alone, 2023 Cornell Law School
Beliefs And Probabilities: The Errors That Remain Are Mine Alone, Kevin M. Clermont
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Imagine that the preface to a professor’s book implicitly asserts that all the propositions in the rest of his or her book are true, but explicitly acknowledges that experience would suggest some errors remain among those propositions. The prof thereby seems paradoxically to believe inconsistent statements. But in fact this famous preface paradox is an illusion. The first statement is a belief reflecting epistemic uncertainty, while the second is a probabilistic statement about aleatory uncertainty. If one were to convert the probability into a belief, one would see that the author rationally holds perfectly consistent beliefs.
Likewise the lottery paradox …
Environmental Evidence, 2023 University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law
Environmental Evidence, Seema Kakade
Faculty Scholarship
The voices of impacted people are some of the most important when trying to make improvements to social justice in a variety of contexts, including, criminal policing, housing, and health care. After all, the people with on the ground experience know what is likely to truly effectuate change in their community, and what is not. Yet, such lived experience is also often significantly lacking and undermined in law and policy. People with lived experience tend to be seen as both community experts with valuable knowledge, as well as non-experts with little valuable knowledge. This Article explores the lived experience with …
Digital Habit Evidence, 2023 American University Faculty Account
Digital Habit Evidence, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
This Article explores how “habit evidence” will become a catalyst for a new form of digital proof based on the explosive growth of smart homes, smart cars, smart devices, and the Internet of Things. Habit evidence is the rule that certain sorts of semiautomatic, regularized responses to particular stimuli are trustworthy and thus admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence (“FRE”) 406 “Habit; Routine Practice” and state equivalents.
While well established since the common law, “habit” has made only an inconsistent appearance in reported cases and has been underutilized in trial practice. But intriguingly, once applied to the world of …
Provisional Measures In Aid Of Arbitration, 2023 University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Provisional Measures In Aid Of Arbitration, Ronald A. Brand
Articles
The success of the New York Convention has made arbitration a preferred means of dispute resolution for international commercial transactions. Success in arbitration often depends on the extent to which a party may secure assets, evidence, or the status quo between parties prior to the completion of the arbitration process. This makes the availability of provisional measures granted by either arbitral tribunals or by courts fundamental to the arbitration. In this Article, I consider the existing legal framework for provisional measures in aid of arbitration, with particular attention to the sources of the rules providing for such measures. Those sources …
The Incongruence Principle Of Evidence, 2023 Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law
The Incongruence Principle Of Evidence, Hillel Bavli
Indiana Law Journal
Evidence law assumes that the meaning and value of information at trial is equal to the meaning and value of the same information in the real world. This premise underlies evidence policy, judicial applications of evidence law, and instructions to jurors for evaluating evidence. However, it is incorrect, and the law’s failure to recognize this hinders its aims of accuracy and equality.
In this article, I draw on fields outside of law—including Bayesian inference and cognitive psychology—to develop a model of evidence that describes how jurors combine new evidence with prior beliefs (or “priors”) to make inferences and judgments. I …
Reforming Eyewitness Identification Processes: Challenges And Recommendations For Successful Implementation, 2023 Mitchell Hamline School of Law
Reforming Eyewitness Identification Processes: Challenges And Recommendations For Successful Implementation, Daniel Manley
Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice
No abstract provided.