Judge Jack B. Weinstein has had a large influence on many areas of the law. He has had an immense amount of influence on the law of evidence, including (but not limited to) the law governing expert and scientific evidence as well as the law governing statistical evidence. I am pleased to report there is a new book about this renowned and thoughtful judge: Jeffrey B. Morris, THE CRAFT AND ACTIVISM OF JACK WEINSTEIN: LEADERSHIP ON THE FEDERAL BENCH (Oxford 2011). Having just gotten my hands on a copy of this book, I cannot definitively proclaim that it is a good book. But I have skimmed a few parts of the book and what I have read so far is very interesting.
The book grew out of what was originally envisioned as an oral history project. The interviews were conducted over a period of a decade! Transcripts of the interviews, the book proclaims, were to be deposited with the Columbia University libraries and the law library of the Touro Law School.
[The book] considers the ways a particularly gifted federal judge has seized the opportunities and tools available to federal trial judges to make policy which has had a national impact. ... Beginning with an explanation as to why Weinstein, as scholar and jurist, is entitled to an in-depth study, Morris then considers Weinstein's background before appointment to the bench and...offers many examples of how Weinstein's background has affected his decision making. ... A leader in the battle against harsh sentencing, Weinstein has endeavored to bring a "human face" to the law in a variety of ways.
The dynamic evidence page
It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.
1 comment:
Judge Weinstein is an independent judge who aspires to give law a human face. Over the years I have changed my mind about many things. However, I have never changed my belief that the narrowly-hierarchical view of the judiciary -- one that views higher courts as issuing binding commands to lower courts -- is, as academics are wont to say, "deeply flawed." It is, of course, true that giving latitude to lower court judges to follow (and make) the law as they see and understand it raises issues that are akin to (but not the same as) those presented by civil disobedience. But it is comforting to have a judge who views the people in his courtroom (and the people his decisions affect) as human beings whose fate we should care about; it is very good, I think, that J. Weinstein does not think of such parties & persons "impersonally."
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