Put the Pieces Together

..and you need to see how the parts of your case hang together, you need a "case theory," an explanation of how if at all the parts of your case -- the law, your stories, the weight of your evidence -- fit together...

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Assess the Strength of Your Evidence

...and you need to assess the strength of your testimonial and nontestimonial evidence...

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Gather Your Evidence

But you need to gather and organize your evidence in support of your claims, charges, defenses, time lines, and scenarios.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Time Lines and Scenarios

But in your investigation (or trial preparation) you will also want and need to develop time lines and scenarios. These will serve a variety of purposes.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Finding the Law

But if you want to begin your investigation (or your preparation for trial), you will have do some legal research and some legal reasoning.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Marshaling Evidence by Law

One might begin to marshal evidence on the basis of legal doctrines.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Various Methods of Marshaling Evidence

There are various ways of marshaling, or organizing, evidence.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Marshaling Evidence

If you anticipate the possibility of litigation (or if you are planning for a trial), you want and need to marshal evidence.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

The "Clergy Sex Abuse" Litigation Wars Continue

Judge dismisses ‘with prejudice’ sex abuse charges against Catholic priest Catholic News Agency (Sept. 2, 2010):

A judge in West Virginia has dismissed all charges against a Catholic priest from Cincinnati who was accused of molesting a 10-year-old boy in 1991. Attorneys for the priest, who was suspended for over a year because of the allegations, said the ruling found that the accuser had manipulated and falsified evidence.

Ashby Jones, Plaintiffs Drop Sex-Abuse Suit Against Vatican Wall Street Journal Online (August 11, 2010):

Lawsuits over alleged sex abuse by Catholic priests aren't new or unusual. But the Kentucky case gained notoriety because it targeted not U.S.-based priests or bishops, but the Vatican itself. According to the allegation, Catholic clergy in the U.S. engaged in a systematic cover-up of sex abuse under explicit instruction from the Holy See. The plaintiffs charged the cover-up led to numerous incidents of sex abuse.

In his filing, Mr. McMurry blamed earlier legal decisions in the case which supported the Vatican's argument that as a sovereign nation it was largely immune from lawsuits.

"Plaintiffs in this case are permitted only to pursue claims against the Holy See for the acts of its 'officials or employees' in the United States," the filing read. "Plaintiffs are without the legal right to pursue the Holy See for its direct acts."

Jeffrey Lena, a lawyer for the Vatican, said in a statement: "Six years ago, the plaintiffs' lawyers concocted a series of allegations. But they never had the evidence to back those allegations up. And that is the real reason plaintiffs now wish to dismiss their own case."

At least three other cases filed in the U.S. are pending against the Vatican. Michael Finnegan, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in those, said the dismissal of the Kentucky case would have "no bearing at all" on them. "We believe in our cases and we're moving forward," he said.

Belgian church abuse raids ruled illegal BBC News Europe (9 September 2010):

A Belgian court has ruled that recent raids by police investigating alleged child sex abuse by Catholic priests were illegal.

The appeals court also said the documents seized in June's raids on several buildings of Belgium's Catholic Church cannot be used by prosecutors.

[snip, snip]

In April, the Church was shaken when the Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, resigned and admitted to having sexually abused a boy before and after becoming a bishop.

[snip, snip]

On Thursday, the appeals court in Brussels said the raids on the Church headquarters north of the capital and at the home of the former Archbishop of Belgium, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, were disproportionate. The court also ordered that all the seized documents - including nearly 500 files and a computer from the offices of a Church commission investigating allegations of sex abuse - must be returned.

The current Archbishop of Belgium, Cardinal Andre-Joseph Leonard, said after the ruling that it was "in everyone's interests that the fundamental rules of law are respected", the AFP news agency reports.

He stressed that he was "in no way opposed to a correctly-run judicial investigation" had that he was "satisfied that clarity has finally been shone on this affair".

The Church commission [which had been set up with the Belgian Catholic Church's cooperation to investigate clergy sex abuse in Belgium] resigned en masse soon after the raids, and Pope Benedict XVI has denounced the raids as "deplorable".

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Neurocharacter

If neuroscience -- in the form of fMRIs and all that -- could be used to predict human behavior, would evidence such as fMRI evidence amount to prohibited "circumstantial character evidence," the use of character, or disposition, to show the doing of an act on a particular occasion? Is a "neural disposition" or a genetic disposition a disposition? A character trait? Is there a difference (legally speaking) between "character" and "disposition"? Can we answer such questions without knowing the point of the prohibition against circumstantial use of character? (No.) Have courts given reasonably consistent accounts of the purpose of the prohibition against circumstantial use of character? (No.)

Isn't the common use of the word "circumstantial" in this context unfortunate? (Yes.)

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Fact -- or Chauvinism?

D.D. Guttenplan, In Europe, Fund-Raising Lessons From Americans NYTimes (Sept. 5, 2010):

Dr. Salmi points to France and Germany, two prosperous countries, both with a long tradition of scientific achievement, yet whose best universities “are hardly recognized as elite institutions.”

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Large Numbers

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Law and Philosophy

There were, I think, a lot of things wrong with German Idealism. But, in my dotage, I occasionally miss the grand aspirations and vision of philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel (and, long before that, Plato and Aristotle). Modern legal "theorists" -- some of them, in any event -- should have the courage to talk once again about ontology as well as epistemology. They could take their inspiration (and guts) from the AI-Folk, many of whom have not hesitated to talk about "ontologies."

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Recent Article on the Baffling Case of Edward Jackson, Medical Doctor and Rapist

See The Case of Rapist Dr. Edward F. Jackson, which I discussed earlier here.

Sometimes there are too few degrees of separation from horrors.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Panel Discussion on Statistical Inference in Legal Proceedings

The current chair of the AALS Evidence Section -- Ed Cheng -- recently announced the following event:

EVIDENCE SECTION PANEL, Saturday, January 8, 2011, 10:30am-12:15pm, The Future of Statistics and the Law.

The panel this year is something of an homage to the fortieth anniversary of the Finkelstein-Fairley-Tribe debates in the Harvard Law Review over the use of statistical evidence in legal proceedings. Given the recent popularity of quantitative methods in the legal academy and the growth of computationally intensive methods in areas like on-line retailing, I thought it would be a good time to revisit the question of the place of statistics in the law.

The panel, comprised of Erica Beecher-Monas (Wayne State), George Fisher (Stanford), Jay Koehler (Northwestern), and Mike Pardo (Alabama), will look at the future of statistical evidence from a variety of angles. In addition to a historical look at the old chestnut, People v. Collins, the panel will examine the promise of statistics in generating more rigorous inferences, the philosophical objections to this promise, and how statistics have played out in real courtroom battles.

This looks like a very interesting program.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Classes Start Monday across the River

Yes, that river.

I will show my Evidence students various images of inference and proof. I mean literal images (pictures).

Of course, I'll show them -- or they will see -- various other things as well.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Spindle Law and the Evidence Module in Legal Education

Spindle Law, which carries the evidence module that I edit, got favorable comment in Prism Legal (August 15, 2010). Ron Friedmann wrote (in part):

Spindle Law is “is a new kind of legal research and writing system”. It presents a taxonomy of law through which a user can drill down to find authority for points of law. It is a ’social media’ or ‘crowd sourcing’ approach. Ambrogi writes

“Spindle Law resembles a treatise, in that it assembles rules of law together with the authorities to back up those rules. Structurally, it organizes the law into a tree, with each branch leading to ever-narrowing branches. Thus, the broad branch “courts” leads to narrower branches for “evidence” and “civil procedure,” and each of those branches leads to increasingly narrower branches.”

I can see how Spindle Law’s graphic approach, coupled with community contributions, could lead to a valuable legal research tool. While not an immediate threat to law firms, a system like this could evolve to be an important resource for in-house counsel. Why pay even associate rates if a quick consultation of Spindle Law were to yield a reasonably reliable answer?

Although I doubt that Spindle Law will make lawyers or junior lawyers superfluous -- for one thing, authority and cases run often run in different directions; for another thing, the law changes; and for yet another thing, the stated rules are often or always fuzzy to some degree -- I do think Spindle Law can become an efficient tool for legal research -- and for legal education. This is why I have incorporated the evidence module into my Evidence course: Spindle Law is a lovely way to describe (and find) relatively settled corners of legal doctrines such as subsequent remedial measures. (The comments sections of Spindle Law allow and encourage discussion of legal doctrines and practices: Spindle Law is not just about black-letter rules -- though it does operate on the premise that some legal rules and principles are relatively settled and are therefore relatively black-letter.)

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Do Jurors Need Tools?

Monica Davey & Susan Salney, "Jurors Fault Complexity of the Blagojevich Trial," NYTimes (August 18, 2010):

As the jurors in the corruption case against Rod R. Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor, entered a 25th-floor conference room here, one problem was instantly clear: They were overwhelmed. The judge had handed them instructions that ran to more than a hundred pages. The verdict sheet was as elaborate as some income tax forms. And many of the 24 counts they were being asked to consider came in multiple parts and were highly technical and interconnected.

"It was like, 'Here’s a manual, go fly the space shuttle,'" Steve Wlodek, one of the jurors, said Wednesday. Jurors said it took them several days just to figure out how to begin to break down their assignment into manageable tasks — not to mention how to understand the legal terminology (what exactly is conspiracy to commit extortion?). These were early hints of the multiple stumbling blocks they would find as they struggled, but failed, over 14 days of deliberations, to reach a verdict on any of the counts but one.

Was the problem mainly complexity? Or was the problem mainly that the jurors were not given tools for managing the complex task they were asked to perform?

The article reports that the jurors used Post-it notes. Could they have been given something more flexible and comprehensive?

Did the jurors have a simple computer with, say, Word at their disposal? Would that have helped them manage their assignment?

The article reports, unsurprisingly I think, that the jurors developed their own tools:

After initial frustration and confusion upon arriving in the deliberation room with little sense of what to do next, the jurors laid out a plan. 

On large sheets of paper, they wrote down crimes Mr. Blagojevich was accused of committing, and taped each one on the walls around the room. On the sheets: a claim that he had sought political contributions in exchange for legislation to help a local pediatric hospital; another that he had sought a political fund-raising event in exchange for state financing for a school; another that he had sought payments for a law that would benefit the horse racing industry; and so on.

The jurors did pretty much what any rational person would do when faced with the many questions they had to resolve.


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The dynamic evidence page
It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

"Images" and "Text" to Model Evidential Inference in Legal Settings

Many law teachers do not like to use images to think about law. This is a great shame. Compare James Franklin, Diagrammatic reasoning and modelling in the imagination: the secret weapons of the Scientific Revolution.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.

Review of Jim Franklin's What Science Knows and How It Knows It

See this review in the Spectator.

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The dynamic evidence page

It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.