Download or read book Legal Writing written by Robert Edwin Bacharach and published by American Bar Association. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A magnificent book on writing. Drawing on the lessons from psycholinguistics and rhetoric, Judge Bacharach has written a remarkably practical book on how to write effectively. Judge Bacharach illustrates his points with very specific suggestions and countless examples from briefs from top lawyers and opinions of judges. I learned so much from this wonderful book." -- Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean, Berkeley School of Law

Download or read book Science and Judicial Reasoning written by Katalin Sulyok and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering study on environmental case-law examines how courts engage with science and reviews legitimate styles of judicial reasoning.

Download or read book Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence written by and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Judging Science written by Kenneth R. Foster and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attempting to reconcile the law's need for workable rules of evidence with the views of scientific validity and reliability. What is scientific knowledge and when is it reliable? These deceptively simple questions have been the source of endless controversy. In 1993, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling on the use of scientific evidence in federal courts. Federal judges may admit expert scientific evidence only if it merits the label scientific knowledge. The testimony must be scientifically reliable and valid. This book is organized around the criteria set out in the 1993 ruling. Following a general overview, the authors look at issues of fit--whether a plausible theory relates specific facts to the larger factual issues in contention; philosophical concepts such as the falsifiability of scientific claims; scientific error; reliability in science, particularly in fields such as epidemiology and toxicology; the meaning of scientific validity; peer review and the problem of boundary setting; and the risks of confusion and prejudice when presenting science to a jury. The book's conclusion attempts to reconcile the law's need for workable rules of evidence with the views of scientific validity and reliability that emerge from science and other disciplines.

Download or read book A Convergence of Science and Law written by Policy and Global Affairs and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-08-01 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report is a summary of the first meeting of the Science, Technology, and Law Panel. The Policy Division of the National Research Council established the panel to bring the science and engineering community and the legal community together on a regular basis to explore pressing issues, to improve communication, and to help resolve such issues between these communities.

Download or read book The Age of Expert Testimony written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2002-03-13 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The federal courts are seeking ways to increase the ability of judges to deal with difficult issues of scientific expert testimony. The workshop explored the new environment judges, plaintiffs, defendants, and experts face in light of "Daubert" and "Kumho," when presenting and evaluating scientific, engineering, and medical evidence.

Download or read book Statistical Science in the Courtroom written by Joseph L. Gastwirth and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expert testimony relying on scientific and other specialized evidence has come under increased scrutiny by the legal system. A trilogy of recent U.S. Supreme Court cases has assigned judges the task of assessing the relevance and reliability of proposed expert testimony. In conjunction with the Federal judiciary, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has initiated a project to provide judges indicating a need with their own expert. This concern with the proper interpretation of scientific evidence, especially that of a probabilistic nature, has also occurred in England, Australia and in several European countries. Statistical Science in the Courtroom is a collection of articles written by statisticians and legal scholars who have been concerned with problems arising in the use of statistical evidence. A number of articles describe DNA evidence and the difficulties of properly calculating the probability that a random individual's profile would "match" that of the evidence as well as the proper way to intrepret the result. In addition to the technical issues, several authors tell about their experiences in court. A few have become disenchanted with their involvement and describe the events that led them to devote less time to this application. Other articles describe the role of statistical evidence in cases concerning discrimination against minorities, product liability, environmental regulation, the appropriateness and fairness of sentences and how being involved in legal statistics has raised interesting statistical problems requiring further research.

Download or read book Judges and Their Audiences written by Lawrence Baum and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What motivates judges as decision makers? Political scientist Lawrence Baum offers a new perspective on this crucial question, a perspective based on judges' interest in the approval of audiences important to them. The conventional scholarly wisdom holds that judges on higher courts seek only to make good law, good policy, or both. In these theories, judges are influenced by other people only in limited ways, in consequence of their legal and policy goals. In contrast, Baum argues that the influence of judges' audiences is pervasive. This influence derives from judges' interest in popularity and respect, a motivation central to most people. Judges care about the regard of audiences because they like that regard in itself, not just as a means to other ends. Judges and Their Audiences uses research in social psychology to make the case that audiences shape judges' choices in substantial ways. Drawing on a broad range of scholarship on judicial decision-making and an array of empirical evidence, the book then analyzes the potential and actual impact of several audiences, including the public, other branches of government, court colleagues, the legal profession, and judges' social peers. Engagingly written, this book provides a deeper understanding of key issues concerning judicial behavior on which scholars disagree, identifies aspects of judicial behavior that diverge from the assumptions of existing models, and shows how those models can be strengthened.

Download or read book The Behavior of Federal Judges written by Lee Epstein and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-07 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Judges play a central role in the American legal system, but their behavior as decision-makers is not well understood, even among themselves. The system permits judges to be quite secretive (and most of them are), so indirect methods are required to make sense of their behavior. Here, a political scientist, an economist, and a judge work together to construct a unified theory of judicial decision-making. Using statistical methods to test hypotheses, they dispel the mystery of how judicial decisions in district courts, circuit courts, and the Supreme Court are made. The authors derive their hypotheses from a labor-market model, which allows them to consider judges as they would any other economic actors: as self-interested individuals motivated by both the pecuniary and non-pecuniary aspects of their work. In the authors' view, this model describes judicial behavior better than either the traditional “legalist” theory, which sees judges as automatons who mechanically apply the law to the facts, or the current dominant theory in political science, which exaggerates the ideological component in judicial behavior. Ideology does figure into decision-making at all levels of the federal judiciary, the authors find, but its influence is not uniform. It diminishes as one moves down the judicial hierarchy from the Supreme Court to the courts of appeals to the district courts. As The Behavior of Federal Judges demonstrates, the good news is that ideology does not extinguish the influence of other components in judicial decision-making. Federal judges are not just robots or politicians in robes.

Download or read book Electing Judges written by James L. Gibson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-09-20 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revealing and provocative study of the effects of judicial elections on state courts and public perceptions of impartiality. In Electing Judges, leading judicial politics scholar James L. Gibson responds to the growing concern that the realities of campaigning are undermining judicial independence and even the rule of law. Armed with empirical evidence, Gibson offers the most systematic and comprehensive study to date of the impact of judicial elections on public perceptions of fairness, impartiality, and the legitimacy of state courts—and his findings are both counterintuitive and controversial. Gibson finds that ordinary Americans do not conclude from campaign promises that judges are incapable of making impartial decisions. Instead, he shows, they understand the process of deciding cases to be an exercise in policy making, rather than of simply applying laws to individual cases—and consequently think it’s important for candidates to reveal where they stand on important issues. Negative advertising also turns out to have a limited effect on perceptions of judicial legitimacy, though certain kinds of campaign contributions can create the appearance of improper bias. Taking both the good and bad into consideration, Gibson argues persuasively that elections are ultimately beneficial in boosting the institutional legitimacy of courts, despite the slight negative effects of some campaign activities

Download or read book Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-10-26 with total page 1034 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Third Edition, assists judges in managing cases involving complex scientific and technical evidence by describing the basic tenets of key scientific fields from which legal evidence is typically derived and by providing examples of cases in which that evidence has been used. First published in 1994 by the Federal Judicial Center, the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence has been relied upon in the legal and academic communities and is often cited by various courts and others. Judges faced with disputes over the admissibility of scientific and technical evidence refer to the manual to help them better understand and evaluate the relevance, reliability and usefulness of the evidence being proffered. The manual is not intended to tell judges what is good science and what is not. Instead, it serves to help judges identify issues on which experts are likely to differ and to guide the inquiry of the court in seeking an informed resolution of the conflict. The core of the manual consists of a series of chapters (reference guides) on various scientific topics, each authored by an expert in that field. The topics have been chosen by an oversight committee because of their complexity and frequency in litigation. Each chapter is intended to provide a general overview of the topic in lay terms, identifying issues that will be useful to judges and others in the legal profession. They are written for a non-technical audience and are not intended as exhaustive presentations of the topic. Rather, the chapters seek to provide judges with the basic information in an area of science, to allow them to have an informed conversation with the experts and attorneys.

Download or read book Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009-07-29 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scores of talented and dedicated people serve the forensic science community, performing vitally important work. However, they are often constrained by lack of adequate resources, sound policies, and national support. It is clear that change and advancements, both systematic and scientific, are needed in a number of forensic science disciplines to ensure the reliability of work, establish enforceable standards, and promote best practices with consistent application. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward provides a detailed plan for addressing these needs and suggests the creation of a new government entity, the National Institute of Forensic Science, to establish and enforce standards within the forensic science community. The benefits of improving and regulating the forensic science disciplines are clear: assisting law enforcement officials, enhancing homeland security, and reducing the risk of wrongful conviction and exoneration. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States gives a full account of what is needed to advance the forensic science disciplines, including upgrading of systems and organizational structures, better training, widespread adoption of uniform and enforceable best practices, and mandatory certification and accreditation programs. While this book provides an essential call-to-action for congress and policy makers, it also serves as a vital tool for law enforcement agencies, criminal prosecutors and attorneys, and forensic science educators.

Download or read book No Magic Wand written by David S. Caudill and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2006-06-29 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 1993, Supreme Court precedent has asked judges to serve as gatekeepers to their expert witnesses, admitting only reliable scientific testimony. Lacking a strong background in science, however, some judges admit dubious scientific testimony packages by articulate practitioners, while others reject reliable evidence that is unreasonably portrayed as full of holes. Seeking a balance between undue deference and undeserved skepticism, Caudill and LaRue draw on the philosophy of science to help judges, juries, and advocates better understand its goals and limitations.

Download or read book Science and Public Reason written by Sheila Jasanoff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays by Sheila Jasanoff explores how democratic governments construct public reason, that is, the forms of evidence and argument used in making state decisions accountable to citizens. The term public reason as used here is not simply a matter of deploying principled arguments that respect the norms of democratic deliberation. Jasanoff investigates what states do in practice when they claim to be reasoning in the public interest. Reason, from this perspective, comprises the institutional practices, discourses, techniques and instruments through which governments claim legitimacy in an era of potentially unbounded risks—physical, political, and moral. Those legitimating efforts, in turn, depend on citizens’ acceptance of the forms of reasoning that governments offer. Included here therefore is an inquiry into the conditions that lead citizens of democratic societies to accept policy justification as being reasonable. These modes of public knowing, or “civic epistemologies,” are integral to the constitution of contemporary political cultures. Methodologically, the book is grounded in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). It uses in-depth qualitative studies of legal and political practices to shed light on divergent cross-cultural constructions of public reason and the reasoning political subject. The collection as a whole contributes to democratic theory, legal studies, comparative politics, geography, and ethnographies of modernity, as well as STS.

Download or read book The Power of Judges written by David Neuberger and published by Haus Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To the vast majority of the English public, the role of the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court has often been distant and incomprehensible, its judges a caste apart from society. The Power of Judges ends this mystery, exploring the fundamental concept of justice and explaining the main functions of the courts, the challenges they face, and the complexity of the judicial system. In this lucid account of the judiciary, David Neuberger and Peter Riddell lead us through an array of topics both philosophical and logistical, including the relationships between morality and law and between Parliament and the judiciary. They explain the effects of cuts in legal aid and shed light on complex and controversial subjects like assisted dying and the complexities of combating mass terrorism while protecting personal liberty. Given that many of these issues span national borders, the book also compares the United Kingdom’s legal system with its counterparts in the United States and Germany. Full of insights, The Power of Judges is an informative and accessible account of the United Kingdom’s judicial system, its contribution to running the country, and the challenges it faces—including the many threats to its effectiveness.

Download or read book Galileo s Revenge written by Peter W. Huber and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 1993-03-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scathing indictment of the growing role of junk science in our courtrooms. Peter W. Huber shows how time and again lawyers have used—and the courts have accepted—spurious claims by so-called expert witnesses to win astronomical judgments that have bankrupted companies, driven doctors out of practice, and deprived us all of superior technologies and effective, life-saving therapies.

Download or read book The Failure of Judges and the Rise of Regulators written by Andrei Shleifer and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Government regulation is ubiquitous today in rich and middle-income countries--present in areas that range from workplace conditions to food processing to school curricula--although standard economic theories predict that it should be rather uncommon. In this book, Andrei Shleifer argues that the ubiquity of regulation can be explained not so much by the failure of markets as by the failure of courts to solve contract and tort disputes cheaply, predictably, and impartially. When courts are expensive, unpredictable, and biased, the public will seek alternatives to dispute resolution. The form this alternative has taken throughout the world is regulation. The Failure of Judges and the Rise of Regulators gathers Shleifer's influential writings on regulation and adds to them a substantial introductory essay in which Shleifer critiques the standard theories of economic regulation and proposes "the Enforcement Theory of Regulation," which sees regulation as the more efficient strategy for social control of business. Subsequent chapters present the theoretical and empirical case against the efficiency of courts, make the historical and theoretical case for the comparative efficiency of regulation, and offer two empirical studies suggesting circumstances in which regulation might emerge as an efficient solution to social problems. Shleifer does not offer an unconditional endorsement of regulation and its expansion but rather argues that it is better than its alternatives, particularly litigation.