Being Cheeky in Academia

Charlotte Allen, Elizabeth Warren's Cheekbones, A blond, blue-eyed Cherokee? Maybe not, but who cares?, LATimes (May 27, 2012).
Ms. Allen seems to think both that (i) we shouldn't care about racial and ethnic identity and (ii) we shouldn't care if someone misrepresents his or her racial or ethnic identity as long as the misrepresentation does not end up securing an advantage for the person who made the misrepresentation.
So: It's OK to try to deceive if your attempt at deception does not do what you hoped it would?
Are you listening, used car salesmen and saleswomen? Go ahead and lie -- but do so only when you're quite sure your lying won't do you any good.

• If you were to ask me what would then be the point of lying, I would have to say that I don't know and that you'll have to ask someone else.

N.B. An important caveat for students who are applying for admission to Harvard Law School: you would be ill-advised to follow Ms. Warren's example - unless, of course, you can document the true (and advantageous) ethnic or racial source of your high cheekbones. A misrepresentation by a student in an application for admission to Harvard Law School is viewed (at a minimum) as a serious flaw in the application. 

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Eben Moglen: Prophet

See Moglen's jeremiad -- it is, for the most part a jeremiad, but not entirely. You should watch the talk, "Why Freedom of Thought Requires Free Media and Why Free Media Require Free Technology."
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Some articles in Law, Probability and Risk

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Deprivation of Liberty without Due Process in America

Jonathan Weisman, House Vote Upholds Indefinite Detention of Terror Suspects NYTimes (May 18, 2012):
"The House on Friday turned back an unusual coalition of liberals and conservatives and voted down legislation to reject explicitly the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects apprehended on United States soil....
"Well before the final vote, the White House promised a veto if the final version maintained the House spending levels and tied President Obama’s hands on detainee and nuclear policies. ......
"The Defense Authorization Act is required each year to set Pentagon policy and spending levels, but House Republicans have turned it into a showcase for their opposition to Obama administration policies.

"This year, Democratic leaders had some surprise support. Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, a Tea Party-backed freshman Republican, teamed up with Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, to declare that terrorism suspects apprehended on United States soil should not be detained indefinitely without charge or trial.

"But the left-right coalition fizzled in the face of charges that the two lawmakers were coddling terrorists. On the 238-to-182 vote against the amendment, as many Democrats — 19 — voted against it as Republicans voted for it.

"'We’ve got a ways to go still, but there are a lot of Republicans who are listening now,' Mr. Amash said. 'I’m confident that most of them are going to go back to their districts, and they are going to get hammered on this issue.'"

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Forensic Use of Social Science

In a blog post in the New York Times yesterday, Professor Gary Gutting of Notre Dame asks, "How reliable are the social sciences?" His remarks are not directed specifically at the use of social science in legal proceedings. And he (necessarily) writes with a broad brush. Nonetheless, his comments are quite perceptive and he identifies several fundamental questions that are directly germane to the use of social science results in legal proceedings such as trials. You should read this blog post!  

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Investigation by James Liebman and Students of Execution of Carlos DeLuna

Good morning [by Carl Schreck, 5/15/2012],

I thought you might be interested in reading about a new investigation published today by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review and at the website thewrongcarlos.net. Professor James Liebman and a team of students led the investigation into the 1989 execution of Carlos DeLuna in Texas. The report has been covered today in The Guardian and at The Atlantic, among other media outlets.
Columbia Law School Investigation Uncovers New Evidence Suggesting Texas Executed Innocent Man
Media Contact: Public Affairs, 212-854-2650 or publicaffairs@law.columbia.edu
New York, May 15, 2012—A groundbreaking investigation by Professor James Liebman and a team of Columbia Law School students has revealed new evidence demonstrating that the State of Texas likely executed an innocent man in 1989.
The investigation, published today by the Columbia Human Rights Law Review (HRLR) and at the website thewrongcarlos.net, represents one of the most comprehensive collections of materials and evidence about a criminal case ever released to the public. It describes the case of Carlos DeLuna, a poor Hispanic man in his twenties with childlike intelligence who was convicted on the thinnest of evidence for the 1983 murder of a convenience store clerk. The materials include video and notes from hundreds of interviews with witnesses and key participants, the complete case files from police and prosecutors, and previously unreleased police audiotape of the manhunt that resulted in DeLuna’s arrest.
The HRLR has devoted its entire Spring 2012 issue to this book-length anatomy of a wrongful execution, titled Los Tocayos Carlos.
“No one cared enough about the defendant or the victim to make sure they caught the right guy,” said Liebman, a leading death penalty litigation expert and the Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. “Everything that could go wrong in a death penalty case did go wrong for DeLuna.”
The article documents how DeLuna was convicted on the basis of a single, nighttime, cross-ethnic eyewitness identification with no corroborating forensic evidence. He claimed from the start that another man named Carlos—Carlos Hernandez—stabbed clerk Wanda Lopez to death with a lock-blade buck knife at a convenience store in Corpus Christi, Texas. DeLuna’s assertion was derided by some as the “some other dude named Carlos” defense, and the lead prosecutor told the jury that Carlos Hernandez was a “phantom” of DeLuna’s imagination.
Liebman and his co-authors, however, uncovered evidence showing that not only did Carlos Hernandez exist, but he was known to police and prosecutors at the time of the trial as someone with a long history of crimes similar to the one for which DeLuna was executed. The police audiotape that Liebman and his authors have released—suppressed during DeLuna’s trial—shows that police chased another man who matched Hernandez’s (but not DeLuna’s) description for 30 minutes immediately following the crime.
Hernandez had been arrested for murdering another woman with a lock-blade buck knife, and he stabbed and attempted to rape another woman while DeLuna was confined to death row. Hernandez spent years bragging around Corpus Christi that he, not his tocayo (“twin” or “namesake”), Carlos DeLuna, committed the murder. Indeed, families of both Carloses mistook photos of the men for each other.
 

Photos: Police mug shots Carlos De Luna, left and Carlos Hernandez, right
"Sadly, DeLuna’s story is not unique,” Liebman said. “The very same factors that sent DeLuna to his death—faulty eyewitness testimony, shoddy legal representation, and prosecutorial misfeasance—continue to put innocent people at risk of execution today.”
The astonishing collection of primary documents and interviews allows readers to come to their own conclusions regarding DeLuna’s guilt or innocence. “My co-authors and I present the story as best we can tell it, and invite readers of all stripes to consider for themselves what happened and how concerned we should be about it,” Liebman said.
The materials presented in the article and at the website include:
·        complete files of police, sheriff’s office, district attorney, county court, trial transcripts, and federal court records
·        all of the police photos (which, via digital enhancement, revealed key evidence never recognized by the police, including the assailant’s bloody footprints)
·        a police audiotape of the 40-minute manhunt that led to Carlos DeLuna’s arrest
·        full criminal records of the key actors
·        a raft of television news clips and newspaper articles
·        20 videotaped interviews of key participants
·        notes from 100 witness interviews
·        an interactive map tracking key people, places, and events
For more information, please visit thewrongcarlos.net, or contact the Columbia Law School Public Affairs office at 222-854-2650 or publicaffairs@law.columbia.edu to arrange an interview.
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Summary Introduction to Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence and Evidential Inference

Law, Probability and Risk -- Law, Probability and Risk Advance Access Alert

Law, Probability and Risk Advance Access articles have been made available
(for the period 27 Feb 2012 to 14 May 2012):


-----------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
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Introduction
Peter Tillers
Law, Probability and Risk published 13 May 2012, 10.1093/lpr/mgs010
http://lpr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/mgs010v1?papetoc

In Memoriam: Louis H. Pollak

Dennis Hevesi,  Louis H. Pollak, Civil Rights Advocate and Federal Judge, Dies at 89 NYTimes (May 12, 2012):

"In January 2002 in a murder case [Lhera Plaza], he ruled that fingerprint experts could point out the similarities between prints from the crime scene to those of a defendant, but could not “present ‘evaluation’ testimony as to their ‘opinion’ that a particular latent print is in fact the print of a particular person.”

"His initial decision delighted defense lawyers and alarmed law enforcement officials. Two months later, after three days of testimony at a special hearing, Judge Pollak reversed himself. Still, he expressed deep concern that “there have been at least a few instances in which fingerprint examiners, here and abroad, have made identifications that turned out to be erroneous.'"

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Is It Possible to Live without Facebook?

I will find out. I deactivated my Facebook account. (FB does not make it easy to locate the deactivate command.) I was spending much too much time on Facebook. And I constantly had to resist -- often unsuccessfully -- responding to posts that I found provocative. I think there are better forums ("fora"?) for discussion of public (& philosophical) issues. For example, books and blogs. But we will see. I don't want to be antisocial for the sake of being antisocial.
N.B. I never will Twitter. 
Postscript: I kept my Google+ account. It strikes me as more meaty and less gossipy. (I am a serious fellow, probably too serious.)
Now I will find other ways to waste time.
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Peter Norvig: Video: The State of Modern AI

The Tech Chronicles: Video: Google’s Peter Norvig on the modern state of AI  SFGate (no date given).

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Is "Reliability" of Expert & Scientific Evidence Sufficient?

Source: Legal Informatics Blog, http://legalinformatics.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/edmond-on-the-law-commission-and-expert-evidence/ :

Edmond on The Law Commission and Expert Evidence

Professor Dr. Gary Edmond of the University of New South Wales Faculty of Law has published Is reliability sufficient? The Law Commission and expert evidence in international and interdisciplinary perspective (Part 1), International Journal of Evidence and Proof, 16(1), 30-65 (2012). Here is the abstract:

This article offers a critical appraisal of the Law Commission‘s Report, Expert Evidence in Criminal Proceedings in England and Wales (2011), and related proposals for reform. Drawing upon interdisciplinary research and empirical studies from other common law jurisdictions it suggests that the introduction of a reliability-based admissibility standard for expert opinion evidence, even in conjunction with provision for recourse to court-appointed experts, is unlikely to generate the kinds of changes required to improve the quality of incriminating forensic science and medicine evidence or align criminal justice practice with espoused goals and principles.

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Off-Topic: In Memoriam: Richard Lugar: Statesman

The word is much overused, but Richard Lugar is a statesman. He should be proud for having contributed much to world peace and the world's welfare. And he should have been President. He also should have been a Nobel Peace Prize winner, a prize he would have gotten the old-fashioned way: by earning it. (Perhaps the latter achievement remains within his grasp?)



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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lugar:

"Much of Lugar's work in the Senate is toward the dismantling of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons around the world."

....

"Lugar has been influential in gaining Senate ratification of treaties to reduce the world's use, production and stockpiling of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In 1991, he initiated a partnership with then-Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn aiming to eliminate latent weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union.[5] To date, the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program has deactivated more than 7,500 nuclear warheads. In 2004, Senators Lugar and Nunn were jointly awarded the Heinz Awards Chairman's Medal for their efforts.[48]"

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It is lamentable that a person who possibly helped to avert nuclear catastrophe(s) does not get adequate political credit for doing so. (What would "adequate credit" for such an enormous accomplishment be?)

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‎"In 1986, Lugar's leadership on legislation that imposed economic and political sanctions on South Africa marked a turning point in the U.S. response to apartheid and represents one of Lugar's finest moments in the Senate. He helped persuade the Reagan administration to embrace a more forceful role in opposing apartheid. That same year, he also helped persuade the Reagan administration to recognize Corazon Aquino as the winner of the disputed presidential election in the Philippines against incumbent Ferdinand Marcos." http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/05/what-richard-lugar-accomplished-for-us-foreign-policy/256936/

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Sen. Lugar’s Remarks to Supporters, Prepared Follow-Up Statementwww.dicklugar.com:

‎

"If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good Senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington. He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party. His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook. He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it.

"This is not conducive to problem solving and governance. And he will find that unless he modifies his approach, he will achieve little as a legislator. Worse, he will help delay solutions that are totally beyond the capacity of partisan majorities to achieve. The most consequential of these is stabilizing and reversing the Federal debt in an era when millions of baby boomers are retiring. There is little likelihood that either party will be able to impose their favored budget solutions on the other without some degree of compromise.

"Unfortunately, we have an increasing number of legislators in both parties who have adopted an unrelenting partisan viewpoint. This shows up in countless vote studies that find diminishing intersections between Democrat and Republican positions. Partisans at both ends of the political spectrum are dominating the political debate in our country. And partisan groups, including outside groups that spent millions against me in this race, are determined to see that this continues. They have worked to make it as difficult as possible for a legislator of either party to hold independent views or engage in constructive compromise. If that attitude prevails in American politics, our government will remain mired in the dysfunction we have witnessed during the last several years. And I believe that if this attitude expands in the Republican Party, we will be relegated to minority status. Parties don’t succeed for long if they stop appealing to voters who may disagree with them on some issues.

"Legislators should have an ideological grounding and strong beliefs identifiable to their constituents. I believe I have offered that throughout my career. But ideology cannot be a substitute for a determination to think for yourself, for a willingness to study an issue objectively, and for the fortitude to sometimes disagree with your party or even your constituents. Like Edmund Burke, I believe leaders owe the people they represent their best judgment.

"Too often bipartisanship is equated with centrism or deal cutting. Bipartisanship is not the opposite of principle. One can be very conservative or very liberal and still have a bipartisan mindset. Such a mindset acknowledges that the other party is also patriotic and may have some good ideas. It acknowledges that national unity is important, and that aggressive partisanship deepens cynicism, sharpens political vendettas, and depletes the national reserve of good will that is critical to our survival in hard times. Certainly this was understood by President Reagan, who worked with Democrats frequently and showed flexibility that would be ridiculed today – from assenting to tax increases in the 1983 Social Security fix, to compromising on landmark tax reform legislation in 1986, to advancing arms control agreements in his second term.

I don’t remember a time when so many topics have become politically unmentionable in one party or the other. Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate change. Republican members are now expected to take pledges against any tax increases. For two consecutive Presidential nomination cycles, GOP candidates competed with one another to express the most strident anti-immigration view, even at the risk of alienating a huge voting bloc. Similarly, most Democrats are constrained when talking about such issues as entitlement cuts, tort reform, and trade agreements. Our political system is losing its ability to even explore alternatives. If fealty to these pledges continues to expand, legislators may pledge their way into irrelevance. Voters will be electing a slate of inflexible positions rather than a leader.

I hope that as a nation we aspire to more than that. I hope we will demand judgment from our leaders. I continue to believe that Hoosiers value constructive leadership. I would not have run for office if I did not believe that.

As someone who has seen much in the politics of our country and our state, I am able to take the long view. I have not lost my enthusiasm for the role played by the United States Senate. Nor has my belief in conservative principles been diminished. I expect great things from my party and my country. I hope all who participated in this election share in this optimism." Source:http://www.dicklugar.com/2012/05/sen-lugars-remarks-to-supporters-prepared-follow-up-statement/

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Lotfi Zadeh on Misconceptions about Fuzzy Logic

Lotfi A. Zadeh	Mon, May 7, 2012 at 8:45 PM
Reply-To: bisc-group@lists.eecs.berkeley.edu To: bisc-group@lists.eecs.berkeley.edu
********************************************************************* Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC) ********************************************************************* Dear members of the BISC [Berkeley Initiative on Soft Computing] Group: Sometimes labels are misleading. This applies to fuzzy logic. There are many kinds of logical systems, some going back to antiquity and some of recent vintage. Among them are:  Aristotelian logic, modal logic, deontic logic, multivalued logic, dynamic logic, probabilistic logic, etc. A common misconception is that fuzzy logic is a member of this list. This is not the case. Fuzzy logic is much broader than a logical system. Basically, fuzzy logic, FL, is a system of  reasoning, modeling and computation. FL has four principal facets. First, the relational facet, FLr. This facet is centered on fuzzy relations, fuzzy if-then rules, fuzzy systems analysis and  fuzzy decision-analysis. Most applications of fuzzy logic relate to this facet. The most visible  application area is fuzzy control. Second, the epistemic facet, FLe. This facet is concerned  with knowledge representation, linguistic variables, possibility theory, search and natural  languages. Third, the fuzzy-set-theoretic facet, FLs. This facet is focused on the theory of  fuzzy sets. Fourth, the logical facet, FLl. In this facet, and only in this facet, fuzzy logic is  viewed as a logical system. To differentiate between FL and FLl, FL and FLl are referred to  as fuzzy logic in a wide sense and fuzzy logic in a narrow sense, respectively. Today, when  we discuss fuzzy logic, it should be understood that we are talking about fuzzy logic in a wide  sense, unless stated to the contrary. Equating FL to its logical facet, FLl, is a common  misconception. This misconception is a source of a great deal of misunderstanding about  what fuzzy logic is and what it has to offer. In science and engineering, precision is respected and imprecision is not. What is widely unrecognized is that in many important applications of fuzzy logic imprecision is deliberate. The underlying rationale is the following. In most real-world problems there is some tolerance for imprecision. Fuzzy logic exploits this tolerance for imprecision through the use of words in place of numbers. Resulting in lower costs and greater simplicity. This is a key idea which underlies Computing with Words (CWW). This idea is one of the most important features of fuzzy logic, and it is unique to fuzzy logic. In CWW, concepts and techniques drawn from the realm of natural languages play an important role. Natural languages are intrinsically imprecise. In CWW, the accent is on problem-solving rather than on axiomatics and precisely defined concepts. There is a rationale for this attitude -- a rationale which is embodied in the Impossibility Principle. Briefly, the Impossibility Principle states that as the complexity of a system increases, a point is reached beyond which precision and relevance become incompatible. An example which I employed in my earlier messages, March 23, 24 and April 4, 2011, is the taxicab problem. The taxicab problem is a convenient platform for introduction of two basic concepts--the concepts of p-validity (provable validity) and f-validity (fuzzy validity). I hail a taxicab and ask the driver to take me from address A, where I am, to address B. There  are two versions: (a) I ask the driver to take me to B the shortest way; and (b) I ask the driver  to take me to B the fastest way. Abstractly, the street map is assumed to be a graph, and the  problem is to move from node A to node B. Each link (block) is assumed to be associated with  a constant, l, the length of the link, and a random variable, t, the traversal time. The traversal  time, t, is assumed to depend on the time at which the taxicab enters the link. Version (a) has a p-valid solution. The route that the driver chooses is an f-valid solution.  Version (b) has an f-valid solution which is the route that the driver takes. Version (b) does not  have a p-valid solution because we have no way of minimizing the sum of not-well-defined  random variables. In summary, Version (a) is a tractable problem whereas Version (b) is an  intractable problem. An analogy is helpful. Assume that I want to reach the peak of a mountain. I start by driving a  car toward the mountain. At some point, I cannot proceed further because of rough terrain. To  proceed further, I use a mule. Eventually, I reach a point beyond which I have to proceed on  foot. Using a car in the first leg of my trip is analogous to the use of tools which are provided by  traditional bivalent-logic-based mathematics. Classes are assumed to be crisp, that is, have  sharp boundaries. Let us refer to the tools which I use as Modality 1. The second leg is  analogous to the use of tools based on fuzzy logic. Classes are assumed to have unsharp  boundaries which are precisely defined via membership functions. Broadly speaking, we  employ what may be labeled fuzzy mathematics. Call it Modality 2. In the third leg, the  machineries of traditional mathematics and fuzzy mathematics cease to be effective. Classes  have unsharp boundaries which are not precisely defined. This is the world of everyday  reasoning. What we employ may be viewed as quasi-mathematics--a kind of mathematics  which I describe very briefly in my 2009 note on "Toward Extended Fuzzy Logic--A First Step,"  Fuzzy Sets and Systems 160, 3175-3181. Call this Modality 3. The taxicab problem, Version  (b), falls within Modality 3. Given a real-world problem, P, what modality does it fall into? The answer depends on how  P is modeled. Idealization of an intractable problem may make it a tractable problem. This is  common practice when we are faced with an intractable problem which we want to solve  through the use of traditional mathematics.     What I said above carries an important message. You should not assume that every problem  that we are faced with falls into Modality 1, that is, can be solved through the use of traditional  mathematics. Rigor and precision carry a price.     Regards,     Lotfi -- Lotfi A. Zadeh Professor Emeritus Director, Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC) Address: 729 Soda Hall #1776 Computer Science Division Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California Berkeley, CA 94720-1776 zadeh@eecs.berkeley.edu Tel.(office): (510) 642-4959 Fax (office): (510) 642-1712 Tel.(home): (510) 526-2569 Fax (home): (510) 526-2433 URL: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~zadeh/ BISC Homepage URLs URL: http://zadeh.cs.berkeley.edu/

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QJustice 2012

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The Surprising Perils of Human Identification

This is one of the best essays ever written on the logical and practical weaknesses of several methods of human identification -- and of methods of identification in general:
Erroll Morris What's in a Name? (Part 2) NYTimes (May 1, 2012)

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See also this post and this post.

New Issue of International Journal of Evidence and Proof

Hat tip to Robert Richards for his alert to the following new issue of the

International Journal of Evidence and Proof

 

Volume 16 Number 1 2012
ISSN: 1365-7127  eISSN: 1740-5572

ARTICLE

The likelihood-ratio framework and forensic evidence in court: a response to R v T
Keywords: Bayesian; Bayes; Admissibility; Validity; Reliability
Geoffrey Stewart Morrison DOI: doi:10.1350/ijep.2012.16.1.390
(2012) 16 E & P 1
 ABSTRACT: In R v T the Court of Appeal concluded that the likelihood-ratio framework should not be used for the evaluation of evidence except 'where there is a firm statistical base'. The present article argues that the court's opinion is based on misunderstandings of statistics and of the likelihood-ratio framework for the evaluation of evidence. The likelihood-ratio framework is a logical framework and not itself dependent on the use of objective measurements, databases and statistical models. The ruling is analysed from the perspective of the new paradigm for forensic-comparison science: the use of the likelihood-ratio framework for the evaluation of evidence; a strong preference for the use of objective measurements, databases representative of the relevant population, and statistical models; and empirical testing of the validity and reliability of the forensic-comparison system under conditions reflecting those of the case at trial.

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Is reliability sufficient? The Law Commission and expert evidence in international and interdisciplinary perspective (Part 1)
Keywords: Law and science; Forensic science; Expertise; Admissibility; Daubert;Reform; Trial safeguards; Proof; Opinion; Judging
Gary Edmond DOI: doi:10.1350/ijep.2012.16.1.391
(2012) 16 E & P 30
ABSTRACT: This article offers a critical appraisal of the Law Commission's Report, Expert Evidence in Criminal Proceedings in England and Wales (2011), and related proposals for reform. Drawing upon interdisciplinary research and empirical studies from other common law jurisdictions it suggests that the introduction of a reliability-based admissibility standard for expert opinion evidence, even in conjunction with provision for recourse to court-appointed experts, is unlikely to generate the kinds of changes required to improve the quality of incriminating forensic science and medicine evidence or align criminal justice practice with espoused goals and principles.

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Due process and the admission of expert evidence on recovered memory in historic child sexual abuse cases: lessons from America
Keywords: Expert evidence; Recovered memory; Due process; Historic child sexual abuse prosecutions; the United States; Ireland; England and Wales; Law Commission
Sinead Ring DOI: doi:10.1350/ijep.2012.16.1.392
(2012) 16 E & P 66
ABSTRACT: This article reviews the decisions of the US state courts on the admissibility of expert testimony on recovered memory in historic child sexual abuse prosecutions. Unlike their English and Irish counterparts, most US courts scrutinise the reliability of expert evidence on recovered memory. In examining the US decisions the article explores the challenges posed to the criminal process by the contested scientific status of recovered memory theory. It sets out due process arguments why expert evidence on the topic should not be admitted in a criminal trial.

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CASE NOTE

Expert evidence on the reliability of eyewitness identification-some observations on the justifications for exclusion: Gage v HM Advocate
Keywords: Expert evidence; Eyewitness identification; Admissibility; Common knowledge; Probative value
Andrew Roberts      93
DOI: doi:10.1350/ijep.2012.16.1.393

CASE COMMENTARIES

Case Commentaries
Rosemary Pattenden      106
DOI: doi:10.1350/ijep.2012.16.1.394

NOTICEBOARD

Noticeboard
Rosemary Pattenden      128
DOI: doi:10.1350/ijep.2012.16.1.395
 

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See also this post and this post.

Brain Endowments and the Interpretation of Natural Signs

We have known for some time that bits of evidence function as signs, or clues. (Sherlock Holmes knew this.) But we do not have a good sense of what it is in us or in the cosmos that enables us to take little bits of evidence and extract from them, possibilities, conjectures, and, even, conclusions (inferences) that reach far beyond the evidence that seems to inspire or provoke them. Now we may have some further support for a conjecture about part of the answer. The source of that support? Pigeons.

Birds are excellent navigators. Indeed, they are phenomenal navigators. But scientists have not been able to explain very well how birds, with their teeny-weeny brains, manage their navigational feats of derring-do. It has been suspected that the answer lies in the ability of birds to detect earth's magnetic fields. But no one has been able to demonstrate the part of the anatomy of birds that enables them to detect and interpret magnetic fields. Until now. See James Gorman, Study Sheds Light on How Pigeons Navigate by Magnetic Field NYTimes (April 26, 2012). It appears that there are "cells in a pigeon’s brain that record detailed information on the earth’s magnetic field." Id.
Stunning. So is there also reason to believe that human brains are also soft-wired with devices that facilitate the interpretation of tiny "evidentiary clues," sensory signals, or "natural signs"? It must be so, yes? The conscious mind -- explicit human thought -- is not by itself capable of extracting all the things (some of them "true," or, in any event, indicative or suggestive of true propositions) that human beings, like pigeons, manage to extract from the environment.
This may not be "intelligent design." But it is, in a way, a kind of harmony of the spheres, a harmony between the internal mechanisms of organisms -- such as pigeons and human beings -- and their "environment" (the cosmos). The only really peculiar thing about the human animal is that it is able, sometimes, to also deploy conscious thought -- explicit ratiocination -- to interpret eeny-weeny signs, or hints(?), in its environment.
Or so I speculate.

• Cf. the second part of my essay Are There Universal Principles or Forms of Evidential Inference? Of Inference Networks and Onto-Epistemology in J. Jackson, M. Langer & P. Tillers, eds., Crime, Procedure, and Evidence in a Comparative and International Context (Hart Publishing, 2008) & William Twining, Philip Dawid & Dimitra Vasilaki, eds., Evidence, Inference and Enquiry (Oxford & British Academy, 2011).

The mighty pigeon...

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An Interesting Comment on Creative Scholarship

 David Brooks, The Creative Monopoly (April 23, 2012):

"As a young man, Peter Thiel competed to get into Stanford. Then he competed to get into Stanford Law School. Then he competed to become a clerk for a federal judge. Thiel won all those competitions. But then he competed to get a Supreme Court clerkship.

"Thiel lost that one. So instead of being a clerk, he went out and founded PayPal. Then he became an early investor in Facebook and many other celebrated technology firms. Somebody later asked him. 'So, aren’t you glad you didn’t get that Supreme Court clerkship?'"

"The question got Thiel thinking. His thoughts are now incorporated into a course he is teaching in the Stanford Computer Science Department. (A student named Blake Masters posted outstanding notes online, and Thiel has confirmed their accuracy.) 

"One of his core points is that we tend to confuse capitalism with competition. We tend to think that whoever competes best comes out ahead. In the race to be more competitive, we sometimes confuse what is hard with what is valuable. The intensity of competition becomes a proxy for value.

"In fact, Thiel argues, we often shouldn’t seek to be really good competitors. We should seek to be really good monopolists. Instead of being slightly better than everybody else in a crowded and established field, it’s often more valuable to create a new market and totally dominate it. The profit margins are much bigger, and the value to society is often bigger, too."

"Now to be clear: When Thiel is talking about a 'monopoly,' he isn’t talking about the illegal eliminate-your-rivals kind. He’s talking about doing something so creative that you establish a distinct market, niche and identity. 'You’ve established a creative monopoly and everybody has to come to you if they want that service, at least for a time.'

"His lecture points to a provocative possibility: that the competitive spirit capitalism engenders can sometimes inhibit the creativity it requires.

"Think about the traits that creative people possess. Creative people don’t follow the crowds; they seek out the blank spots on the map. Creative people wander through faraway and forgotten traditions and then integrate marginal perspectives back to the mainstream. Instead of being fastest around the tracks everybody knows, creative people move adaptively through wildernesses nobody knows."

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It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law.

See also this post and this post.

Woes of Law Teachers v. Woes of Scientists

You're a law teacher? You don't like the industrial model of scholarship? You don't like being judged by the quantity of the articles you place in "leading law reviews"? You wish that the originality of your work counted for more? Things could be worse: You could be a scientist:  Carl Zimmer, A Sharp Rise in Retractions Prompts Calls for Reform, NYTimes (April 16, 2012).
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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Reminder: Summer School on Law & Logic

Do not neglect to apply to the European University Institute-Harvard Law School (with Cardozo Law School as a co-sponsor) Summer School on Law & Logic.

 

Venue: Florence, Italy

Dates:  July 16-20, 2012

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