Download or read book The Psychological Foundations of Evidence Law written by Michael J. Saks and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-01-22 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evidence law is meant to facilitate trials that are fair, accurate, and efficient, and that encourage and protect important societal values and relationships. In pursuit of these often-conflicting goals, common law judges and modern drafting committees have had to perform as amateur applied psychologists. Their task has required them to employ what they think they know about the ability and motivations of witnesses to perceive, store, and retrieve information; about the effects of the litigation process on testimony and other evidence; and about our capacity to comprehend and evaluate evidence. These are the same phenomena that cognitive and social psychologists systematically study. The rules of evidence have evolved to restrain lawyers from using the most robust weapons of influence, and to direct judges to exclude certain categories of information, limit it, or instruct juries on how to think about it. Evidence law regulates the form of questions lawyers may ask, filters expert testimony, requires witnesses to take oaths, and aims to give lawyers and factfinders the tools they need to assess witnesses’ reliability. But without a thorough grounding in psychology, is the “common sense” of the rulemakers as they create these rules always, or even usually, correct? And when it is not, how can the rules be fixed? Addressed to those in both law and psychology, The Psychological Foundations of Evidence Law draws on the best current psychological research-based knowledge to identify and evaluate the choices implicit in the rules of evidence, and to suggest alternatives that psychology reveals as better for accomplishing the law’s goals.

Download or read book Foundations of Evidence Law written by Alex Stein and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2005 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines systematically the underlying theory of evidence in Anglo-American legal systems and identifies the defining characteristics of adjudicative fact-finding. Stein develops a detailed innovative theory which sets aside the traditional vision of evidence law as facilitating the discovery of the truth. Combining probability theory, epistemology, economic analysis, and moral philosophy; he argues instead that the fundamental purpose of evidence law is to apportion the risk oferror in conditions of uncertainty. Stein begins by identifying the domain of evidence law.He then describes the basic traits of adjudicative fact-finding and explores the epistemological foundations of the concept. This discussion identifies the problem of probabilistic deduction that accompanies generalizations to which fact-finders resort. This problem engenders paradoxes which Stein proposes to resolve by distinguishing between probability and weight. Stein advances the principle of maximal individualization that does not allow factfinders to make a finding against a person when the evidence they use is not susceptible to individualized testing.He argues that this principle has broad application, but may still be overridden by social utility. This analysis identifies allocation of the risk of error as requiring regulation by evidence law. Advocating a principled allocation of the risk of error, Stein denounces free proof for allowing individual judges to apportion this risk asthey deem fit.He criticizes the UK's recent shift to a discretionary regime on similar grounds. Stein develops three fundamental principles for allocating the risk of error: the cost-efficiency principle which applies across the board; the equality principle which applies in civil litigation; and the equal best principle which applies in criminal trials. The cost-efficiency principle demands that fact-finders minimize the total cost of errors and error-avoidance.Under the equality principle,fact-finding procedures and decisions must not produce an unequal apportionment of the risk of error between the claimant and the defendant. This risk should be apportioned equally between the parties. The equal best principle sets forth two conditions for justifiably convicting and punishing a defendant. The state must do its best to protect the defendant from the risk of erroneous conviction and must not provide better protection to other individuals. Regulating both the admissibility of evidence and its sufficiency, these principles explain and justify many existing evidentiary rules. Alex Stein is Professor of Law at the Benjamin N.Cardozo School of Law,New York.

Download or read book Criminal Law Procedure and Evidence written by Walter P. Signorelli and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-12 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a complete view of U.S. legal principles, this book addresses distinct issues as well as the overlays and connections between them. It presents as a cohesive whole the interrelationships between constitutional principles, statutory criminal laws, procedural law, and common-law evidentiary doctrines. This fully revised and updated new edition also includes discussion questions and hypothetical scenarios to check learning. Constitutional principles are the foundation upon which substantive criminal law, criminal procedure law, and evidence laws rely. The concepts of due process, legality, specificity, notice, equality, and fairness are intrinsic to these three disciplines, and a firm understanding of their implications is necessary for a thorough comprehension of the topic. This book examines the tensions produced by balancing the ideals of individual liberty embodied in the Constitution against society’s need to enforce criminal laws as a means of achieving social control, order, and safety. Relying on his first-hand experience as a law enforcement official and criminal defense attorney, the author presents issues that highlight the difficulties in applying constitutional principles to specific criminal justice situations. Each chapter of the text contains a realistic problem in the form of a fact pattern that focuses on one or more classic criminal justice issues to which readers can relate. These problems are presented from the points of view of citizens caught up in a police investigation and of police officers attempting to enforce the law within the framework of constitutional protections. This book is ideal for courses in criminal law and procedure that seek to focus on the philosophical underpinnings of the system.

Download or read book The Proof written by Frederick Schauer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Scribes Book Award “Displays a level of intellectual honesty one rarely encounters these days...This is delightful stuff.” —Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal “At a time when the concept of truth itself is in trouble, this lively and accessible account provides vivid and deep analysis of the practices addressing what is reliably true in law, science, history, and ordinary life. The Proof offers both timely and enduring insights.” —Martha Minow, former Dean of Harvard Law School “His essential argument is that in assessing evidence, we need, first of all, to recognize that evidence comes in degrees...and that probability, the likelihood that the evidence or testimony is accurate, matters.” —Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Education “I would make Proof one of a handful of books that all incoming law students should read...Essential and timely.” —Emily R. D. Murphy, Law and Society Review In the age of fake news, trust and truth are hard to come by. Blatantly and shamelessly, public figures deceive us by abusing what sounds like evidence. To help us navigate this polarized world awash in misinformation, preeminent legal theorist Frederick Schauer proposes a much-needed corrective. How we know what we think we know is largely a matter of how we weigh the evidence. But evidence is no simple thing. Law, science, public and private decision making—all rely on different standards of evidence. From vaccine and food safety to claims of election-fraud, the reliability of experts and eyewitnesses to climate science, The Proof develops fresh insights into the challenge of reaching the truth. Schauer reveals how to reason more effectively in everyday life, shows why people often reason poorly, and makes the case that evidence is not just a matter of legal rules, it is the cornerstone of judgment.

Download or read book The Law of Evidence written by I. H. Dennis and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analysing the law of evidence, this book includes essential doctrinal analysis. It takes an account of evidence theory, psychological research on information processing and retrieval, socio-legal work on police investigations, and jury research projects. It reviews changes to the law, brought about by the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

Download or read book Evidence Law written by Roger Park and published by West Academic Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 782 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written from an advocate's perspective, this guide introduces how the courtroom operates and offers a glimpse into the environment that influences these rulings. Major cases and doctrines are discussed. Examples are given to develop a feel for the context in which a particular evidence problem might arise-and for the language lawyers and judges use to resolve it. Also explores the rationale and purpose behind each rule.

Download or read book Evidence of the Law written by Gary Lawson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As Gary Lawson shows, legal claims are inherently objects of proof, and whether or not the law acknowledges the point openly, proof of legal claims is just a special case of the more general norms governing proof of any claim. As a result, similar principles of evidentiary admissibility, standards of proof, and burdens of proof operate, and must operate, in the background of claims about the law. This book brings these evidentiary principles for proving law out of the shadows so that they can be analyzed, clarified, and discussed."--Amazon website.

Download or read book McCormick on Evidence written by Charles Tilford McCormick and published by West Publishing Company. This book was released on 1999 with total page 938 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Code of Evidence written by American Law Institute and published by . This book was released on 1942 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Evidence Law Adrift written by Mirjan R. Damaska and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this important book, a distinguished legal scholar examines how the legal culture and institutions in Anglo-American countries affect the way in which evidence is gathered, sifted, and presented to the courts. Mirjan Damaska focuses on the significance of the divided tribunal (between judge and jury), the concentrated character of trials ("day-in-court" justice), and the prominent role of the parties in adjudication (the adversary system). Throughout he contrasts the Anglo-American system with Continental, or civil- law justice, where lay fact finders sit with professional judges in unified tribunals, proceedings are episodic rather than concentrated, and the parties have fewer responsibilities than in the common-law tradition.Damaska describes the impact of the traditional institutional environment on the gathering and handling of evidence in common- law jurisdictions and then explores recent transformations of this environment: trial by jury has dramatically declined, pretrial proceedings have greatly proliferated, the adversary system shows signs of weakening in some types of cases. As a result, many rules and practices supporting the treatment of evidentiary material are in danger of becoming extinct. In addition, says Damaska, the increasing use of scientific methods of inquiry could place further strains on the use of traditional common-law evidence. In the future we should expect greater variety in decisionmaking activity, with factual inquiries tailored to the specific type of proceeding and common-law evidence restricted to a narrow sphere.

Download or read book Failed Evidence written by David A. Harris and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012-09-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the popularity of crime dramas like CSI focusing on forensic science, and increasing numbers of police and prosecutors making wide-spread use of DNA, high-tech science seems to have become the handmaiden of law enforcement. But this is a myth,asserts law professor and nationally known expert on police profiling David A. Harris. In fact, most of law enforcement does not embrace science—it rejects it instead, resisting it vigorously. The question at the heart of this book is why. »» Eyewitness identifications procedures using simultaneous lineups—showing the witness six persons together,as police have traditionally done—produces a significant number of incorrect identifications. »» Interrogations that include threats of harsh penalties and untruths about the existence of evidence proving the suspect’s guilt significantly increase the prospect of an innocent person confessing falsely. »» Fingerprint matching does not use probability calculations based on collected and standardized data to generate conclusions, but rather human interpretation and judgment.Examiners generally claim a zero rate of error – an untenable claim in the face of publicly known errors by the best examiners in the U.S. Failed Evidence explores the real reasons that police and prosecutors resist scientific change, and it lays out a concrete plan to bring law enforcement into the scientific present. Written in a crisp and engaging style, free of legal and scientific jargon, Failed Evidence will explain to police and prosecutors, political leaders and policy makers, as well as other experts and anyone else who cares about how law enforcement does its job, where we should go from here. Because only if we understand why law enforcement resists science will we be able to break through this resistance and convince police and prosecutors to rely on the best that science has to offer.Justice demands no less.

Download or read book The Law of Evidence in the District of Columbia written by Steffen W. Graae and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Understanding Evidence written by Paul C. Giannelli and published by LexisNexis/Matthew Bender. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Understanding treatise presents the essential topics in evidence law cogently and concisely. While it was written primarily for students in Evidence and Trial Practice courses, the Key Points summary at the end of each chapter and the inclusion of the current Federal Rules of Evidence in an appendix make this treatise an excellent reference for busy attorneys.Understanding Evidence begins with an overview of Evidence law followed by an explanation of the roles of the judge and jury. The remaining chapters are organized under the following topics:Procedural Framework of TrialRelevancyWitnessesReal and Demonstrative EvidenceWritingsHearsayPrivilegesSubstitutes for EvidenceThis treatise extensively discusses and cites the Federal Rules of Evidence. Cases, statutes, other rules, and secondary sources are also cited, providing a comprehensive framework for understanding evidence law.

Download or read book Evidence Law and Practice written by Steven I. Friedland and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Carlson on Evidence written by Ronald L. Carlson and published by . This book was released on 2012-12-15 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book comprehensively compares Georgia's new evidence code with the corresponding federal evidence rule and prior Georgia evidence law, providing detailed commentary for those new Georgia rules with federal correspondents. It takes the reader through statutory provisions in the new code from OCGA 24-1-1 through 24-10-1008. Carlson on Evidence is presented in a user friendly format, with new Georgia evidence statutes placed at the top of every page of analysis for easy access in the courtroom or office. Each rule section contains the number and text of the new Georgia evidence provisions, a summary of 2013 changes, comparison with the Federal Rules of Evidence, and federal and Georgia case law"--Publisher's website.

Download or read book Tennessee Law of Evidence written by Neil P. Cohen and published by Lexis Pub. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First written by Donald F. Paine in 1974, Tennessee Law of Evidence has long been recognized as the definitive authority on evidence law in Tennessee. In this new Third Edition, the authors retain the comprehensive scope of Paine's original masterpiece, but update it to include all the latest statutory, rule, & judicial changes. When confronted by virtually any evidentiary issue in Tennessee, the first place to turn is Tennessee Evidence Law, Third Edition.

Download or read book Federal Rules of Evidence 2017 Edition written by Michigan Legal Publishing Ltd. and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A handy pocket version of the Federal Rules of Evidence (5" x 8"), as amended through January 1, 2017. A Perfect quick reference for your desk or briefcase, for both attorneys and law school students. Contents: Article 1; General Provisions Article 2; Judicial Notice Article 3; Presumptions in Civil Cases Article 4; Relevance and its Limits Article 5; Privileges Article 6; Witnesses Article 7; Opinions and Expert Testimony Article 8; Hearsay Article 9; Authentication and Identification Article 10; Contents of Writings, Recordings, and Photographs Article 11; Miscellaneous Rules