An invitation to collaborative, creative, and comprehensive Evidence scholarship

I am pleased to report that Joannes Vinarao-Pilapil and I have finished a first draft -- a rough draft -- of Spindle Law's evidence module.

If you are a faithful reader of this blog, you know that the evidence module is an online hybrid of

(i) an outline,

(ii) a treatise, and

(iii) an evolving and collaborative account

of the law of evidence.

For further details, see this early post.

But note that Spindle Law now accommodates state law and that the evidence module will eventually cover state evidence rules and principles as well as the the Federal Rules of Evidence. Eventually -- and perhaps before too long -- there will be variants of the evidence module that will examine the law of evidence and proof in countries other than than the U.S.

Now we -- Joannes and I -- need and want your help. We need and want the help of legal professionals -- lawyers, law students, law professors, and judges.

The evidence module, by design, is not a static thing. The evidence module is, by design, incomplete. (Furthermore: the evidence module -- by design -- will never be complete.)

The evidence module awaits your contributions, your comments, your arguments, your research, your thoughts, your suggestions.

The premise of Spindle Law -- or one key premise of Spindle Law -- is that there are legal professionals out there who hunger to do legal scholarship largely (if not only) because they enjoy scholarship, particularly collaborative scholarship.

It is also very probably the case that you can make something of a name for yourself by contributing to the evidence module and that you can get to know other legal professionals around the country and around the world.

Another key premise of Spindle Law and the evidence module is that collaborative scholarship -- the joint work of many scholars and budding scholars -- can sometimes (as in this instance) produce legal scholarship that is finer, richer, and deeper than anything that any single legal scholar can manage to produce.

So I invite you to join this great experiment. To take part, send an e-mail to info@spindleresearch.com and get a password, and start adding to this evolving thing that we (modestly) call an "evidence module."

Many thanks for considering this invitation.

An important postscript: Joannes Vinarao-Pilapil is my first and primary collaborator in this enterprise. Joannes is an eminent Philippine lawyer and legal scholar. She has studied law in the United States as well as in the Philippines.

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