The following book was recently published:J. Jackson, M. Langer & P. Tillers, eds., Crime, Procedure, and Evidence in a Comparative and International Context: Essays in Honour of Professor Mirjan Damaska (Hart Publishing, 2008).Details are available here.
A flyer with a table of contents is available here.
One of his curmudgeonly complaints -- the least important of his complaints in that vein -- rings true. He seems to complain that people who do pro bono work scratch each others' backs by honoring each other with awards and other such things. (One naturally wonders if Judge Jacobs had some particular honoree in mind.) Of course, this sort of sycophantic and narcissistic group self-promotion is not limited to luminaries in the field of legal pro bono work. One finds the same sort of thing in the law school world. (But one wonders if excessive Kantian or Calvinistic agonizing about the purity of one's motivations might lead to honors not being bestowed when honors are due.) Sycophantic self-admiration is also painfully apparent at events hosted by the White House. Is it possible that social self-preening and group self-advancement even infect the judiciary? (Having made the suggestion, I must rush to withdraw it. Surely judges are beyond all that: surely they care only about the public good -- or the law or ... whatever.)
Judge Jacobs's other complaint is more substantive. He asserts that pro bono litigation is anti-social. Why so? Well, in part because, he argues, the people who control such litigation do not have to bear the adverse consequences of the results of their ostensibly public-spirited activities.
Hmm, ..., well, there's a thought for you.
Caveat: I am relying only a fragmentary account of Judge Jacobs's comments. I have no doubt he also asked whether litigation motivated by profit is more pro-social than pro bono litigation. It might be hard to demonstrate that the motivations of lawyers and clients who not purport to act for the public good are more pro-social than those people who do profess to litigate for the public good. So I assume -- I have to assume -- that in the case of private non-pro-bono litigation Judge Jacobs carefully analyzed and explained why the decision makers - corporate counsel, CEOs, hired legal help, etc. -- do realize that if their litigation activities harm the public good they, these self-interested actors, will personally suffer the socially-harmful consequences of their litigation decisions. (We know that self-interest works in financial markets: greed is good [except, of course, under very special circumstances such as the present financial crisis].)
consulting on investigation strategy and the law of evidence
A timeline is a simple but powerful device for marshaling evidence for and in litigation and trials. For example, it can be used to depict the possible sequence of events in issue and thereby identify (i) hypothesized events that have little or no evidential support and (ii) possible causal connections between events. It can also be used for other purposes - for example, (iii) to trace the behavior of a witness or prospective witness over time, (iv) to show the order of submission of evidence at trial, and (v) to develop a story-based opening statement or closing argument.The construction of a timeline, however, is often a laborious process because of (a) the many events that sometimes go into a timeline and (b) the need to revise timelines as events are added. I am happy to report that SmartDraw 2009 makes the business of creating and updating timelines vastly simpler. For example, new events can be added to a timeline with a click of the mouse and -- voila -- the scale of timeline will automatically adjust to accommodate the added event or events. Moreover, SmartDraw 2009 makes it easy to zoom in and out on segments of timelines. The new SmartDraw timeline tool has other useful features. The new timeline tool is a big advance.
consulting on investigation strategy and the law of evidence
