Flash!: The Death of Wigmore Exaggerated Again

Poor Wigmore. He died, it is said, in 1943. But exaggerated and misleading reports of the death of Wigmore have been erupting episodically for over 60 years. The latest is by Jacob Stein, who professes to be an admirer of Wigmore and Wigmore (and I have no reason to doubt this part of Stein's story). But let me assure everyone who might have reason to care that Wigmore lives -- despite several determined efforts (one of which has been going on for almost 30 years) to administer the coup de grâce. I have personal knowledge of Wigmore's continued existence; I have very recently seen Wigmore with my own eyes, and I have very recently also seen recent and numerous mentions of Wigmore on ("in"?) certain WESTLAW databases. (References available on request.) The afterglow (or, if you prefer, shadow) of that effervescent Edwardian just will not fade away. I will personally make sure that it doesn't, b'gosh -- and so will Aspen Publishers.

N.B. Perhaps it is fitting that Wigmore now has an ethereal existence as well as a material one: Wigmore takes up a substantial chunk of the Loislaw databases. Perhaps John Henry W is lurking thereabouts as well.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.

Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser

Quasi-Release of Spindle Law

Yesterday David Gold posted the following message on the Spindle Law Blog:

I’m often asked when we’re going to “release” Spindle Law, and I always give a too-long answer, not only because I’m unfortunately in the habit of answering questions that way, but also because there’s no single event that I equate with Spindle’s “release.” There are many steps in the process of making the site more and more accessible, and more and more useful to more and more people, and since we don’t plan a big marketing campaign to accompany any of these steps, we don’t have a very good reason to label any one of them in particular our “release.”

We’re now, though, preparing to take a step that’s probably as close as any other to what people are thinking when they ask the release question. Joel is building features that will allow us to open the site, partially, to people who are not signed in (that’s what’s called “anonymous” access to the site), and to allow those who want to try out the whole of the site to sign up on their own (”self-registration”). More specifically, the implementation we’re planning will allow anonymous researchers to view our whole hierarchy of topics and rules, and a few other things, too. We hope lawyers searching the web for answers to legal questions will find us this way. (Many lawyers begin their research with a web search, it turns out.) Until they sign up and sign in, they won’t be able to view authorities or contribute, nor will they have access to SpinDoc, Spindle’s research-collection and writing tool. Signing up and then signing in are easy, though, and once that’s done they’ll have access to all of what we have to offer.

At least that’s what we’re planning right now. When it’s done, one of us will have more to say about it, I’m sure. And, of course, there will still be many other steps of “release” thereafter: We’ll keep releasing new content and new features, at some point we’ll take “alpha” off the top of each page on the site (maybe for a while we’ll replace it with “beta,” maybe not), and I hope it won’t be too long before we execute a plan to make some money (about which I’ll also post something; it’s not a secret). Among other things.

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The initial upgrade, or quasi-release, of Spindle Law should take effect tonight.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.

Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser

Slouching toward Crawford v. Washington

I teach the basic course in the law of evidence. The time is fast approaching when I must again teach Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (1994), which is the font of the Court's modern (in using the word "modern," I speak only descriptively; I am not suggesting that Crawford represents progress) -- a case that is the foundation of much modern U.S. Confrontation Clause jurisprudence. Apparently unlike many of my Evidence colleagues in academia, I approach the task of teaching Crawford with dread. This is because the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Crawford is rather like a Rorschach test: what one sees in Crawford about the difference between "testimonial" and "nontestimonial" pretrial statements (the reach of Crawford depends on this difference) -- what one sees in Crawford about this distinction largely depends on what one wants or expects to see and on one's pre-existing mental framework and dispositions. Alternatively stated, Crawford is a bit like the lineup of Kremlin leaders in the days of the Soviet Union at the annual May Day parade. In days of yore – in the days of the USSR – Kremlinologists studied the location of the people in this annual lineup with great care in an effort to determine the status of those people in the Soviet hierarchy. Crawford forces us act much like Kremlinologists: to determine the difference between testimonial and nontestimonial, we are required to search for hints in an opinion that was studiously and craftily crafted to prevent anyone from divining a clear answer.

In an effort finally to master the mysteries of Crawford, I began to print out the comprehensive (and characteristically irreverent) discussion of Crawford by Kenneth Graham, Jr., in the 2009 "pocket part" of 30A C. Wright (deceased) & K. Graham Graham, Jr., Federal Practice & Procedure. I emphasize the word "began": after I ordered the computer printer to print, I noticed it was churning for quite some time. On closer inspection, I realized that I had ordered a print job of approximately 255 pages. And these 255 pages include only Graham's discussion of Crawford; Graham's discussion of the Court sequelae to Crawford is found elsewhere. For fear of decimating the forests of the world, I ordered the printer to stop. I wept. I wept not about Graham's wordiness (he is indeed a bit wordy), but about a Supreme Court opinion that demands so much explication -- explication that mostly consists of passages that point out the insoluble riddles and paradoxes that Crawford presents.

Why do so many of my colleagues seemingly relish the task of talking about Crawford and its successors? The labors of those who work at explaining Crawford are very much like the labors of Sisyphus: such labors are endless and fruitless! (I exaggerate, of course -- but only slightly.) One does begin wonder whether so much human intelligence should be devoted to such a (largely) pointless task. However, law teachers are probably incapable of doing anything other than law teaching. So perhaps it's just as well that they are consigned to such labors: they believe they are doing something useful and this feeling of being useful perhaps impedes the development of serious revolutionary (i.e., rabble-rousing) sentiments among at least a portion of the intelligentsia (and one hopes that most of the rest of the intelligentsia has genuinely useful work to do).

Go here for more (and more serious) material on the Sixth Amendment Right of Confrontation.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.

Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser

Death of Pioneer of Temporal Logic

The New New York Times reports the death of Amir Pnueli, said to be a pioneer of temporal logic. See Kenneth Chang, "Amir Pnueli, Pioneer of Temporal Logic, Dies at 68," NYTimes (Nov. 14, 2009).

Temporal logic is very important or essential for analysis of fact investigation in or for litigation; fact investigation is a dynamic process.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.

Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser