Friday, February 01, 2008

Rap Music Lyrics as Evidence of Guilt in Criminal Trials

See Andrea L. Dennis, Poetic (In)Justice? Rap Music Lyrics as Art, Life, and Criminal Evidence, 31 Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 1 (2007).

The article has some delicious, or appalling, quotations from training manuals for prosecutors. (Training manuals for trial lawyers display the law's equivalent of the relationship between lawmaking and meat processing.)

The use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials is fertile soil for the cultivation of devilishly-difficult (and interesting) essay exam questions. Students, you are hereby forewarned.

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