Recently added articles from Law and Contemporary Problems:
Irreconcilable differences? The troubled marriage of science and law.
Jan 01, 2009; ... In many respects [the scientific expert seems to be a positive annoyance to lawyers, and even to judges at times, a sort of intractable, incompatible, inharmonious factor, disturbing the otherwise smooth current of legal procedure; too important or necessary to be ruled out, too ...
Essay: conventions in science and in the courts: images and realities.
Jan 01, 2009; ... I INTRODUCTION The source of our difficulties with "conventions in law and science" is related to images. Practice as experienced in the law contrasts with conventions accepted in science. The difficulties in applying science in the law are commonly explained in ...
The arts of persuasion in science and law: conflicting norms in the courtroom.
Jan 01, 2009; ... To claim that Charles Darwin was a "rhetorician" may seem to confuse the provinces of rhetoric and science. Their juxtaposition, however, is not only warranted; it is also inescapable. Even scientific discourse must be persuasive to rescue insight from indifference, misunderstanding, ...
Science, law, and the expert witness.
Jan 01, 2009; ... [S]cientific inquiry is by nature tentative and thoroughly fallibilist; it focuses on the general law or principle rather than the particular case; its core values are intellectual honesty and willingness to share evidence .... So it is hardly surprising that the legal system has had ...
How does science come to speak in the courts? Citations, intertexts, expert witnesses, consequential facts, and reasoning.
Jan 01, 2009; ... I INTRODUCTION Citations, in their highly conventionalized forms, visibly indicate each text's explicit use of the prior literature that embodies the knowledge and contentions of its field. Each text explicitly and implicitly invokes prior literature in order to ...
How much evidence is enough? Conventions of causal inference.
Jan 01, 2009; ... I INTRODUCTION One of the most important issues for science in the courtroom is the determination of causality. Like science in the courtroom, science in the regulatory arena can also bring a clash of cultures, misunderstanding, and controversy--especially when ...
Trials and tribulations: what happens when historians enter the courtroom.
Jan 01, 2009; ... I INTRODUCTION Four years ago, as I was sitting at my desk in my overcrowded office, I received an odd e-mail. "Dear Professor," it began, <Pre>I am writing to introduce you to Round Table Group [RTG], and tonotify you of a specific, short-term ...
Merton and the hot tub: scientific conventions and expert evidence in Australian civil procedure.
Jan 01, 2009; ... The ethos of science in that affectively toned complex of values and norms which is held to be binding on the man of science. The norms are expressed in the form of prescriptions, proscriptions, preferences, and permissions. They are legitimized in terms of institutional values .... ...
In defense of "footnote four": a historical analysis of the new deal's effect on land regulation in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jan 01, 2009; ... At the turn of the nineteenth century, the U.S. Supreme Court established and reinforced numerous so-called "economic rights." Lochner v. New York--this period's paradigm case--held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause contained an implicit right to contract. (1) During the ...
Back to the future - questions for the news media from the past.
Sep 22, 2008; ... I The alleged rape by three members of the Duke University lacrosse team led to extensive coverage by media voices as different as CNN Headline News's Nancy Grace (billed as "the feisty former prosecutor") and the more sedate "Gray Lady," The New York Times. Critics of the ...
Trial by media: the betrayal of the First Amendment's purpose.
Sep 22, 2008; ... Trial by jury is rapidly being destroyed in America by the manner in which the newspapers handle all sensational cases. (1) [T]hese defendants were prejudged as guilty and the trial was but a legal gesture to register a verdict already dictated by the press and the public ...
Trying cases in the media: a comparative overview.
Sep 22, 2008; ... I INTRODUCTION Foreigners to the United States are usually struck by the harshness of its conflicts between justice and the mass media. The O.J. Simpson trial, in particular, is frequently cited as a clear illustration of the difficulty of harmonizing a strong ...
The prosecutor and the press: lessons (not) learned from the Mike Nifong debacle.
Sep 22, 2008; ... I INTRODUCTION Former District Attorney Mike Nifong made several statements to the media during the Duke lacrosse case that were overzealous and clearly contrary to a prosecutor's dual responsibilities to seek justice and to preserve a defendant's right to a fair ...
Race to judgment: stereotyping media and criminal defendants. (study of perceptions regarding the media, the accuser, and the accused in the Duke lacrosse case)
Sep 22, 2008; ... I INTRODUCTION The media's coverage of the Duke lacrosse story generated controversy from the very beginning. Early on, criticism came from those who felt that the media mistreated the accuser; later, critics wondered why coverage failed to direct more attention to ...
How noninstitutionalized media change the relationship between the public and media coverage of trials.
Sep 22, 2008; ... I INTRODUCTION Justice Brennan's concurring opinion in Nebraska Press Ass'n v. Stuart (1) puts citizenship and the public at the heart of the purpose of media coverage of legal proceedings: <Pre>Commentary and reporting on the criminal justice system is ...
The Duke lacrosse case and the blogosphere.
Sep 22, 2008; ... I INTRODUCTION On December 28, 2006, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong filed his initial response to the North Carolina State Bar grievance committee's complaint that he had unethically withheld exculpatory DNA evidence in the Duke lacrosse case. Nifong ...
Sheppard v. Maxwell revisited - do the traditional rules work for nontraditional media?
Sep 22, 2008; ... In the late summer of 1954, all across northern Ohio--indeed, throughout much of the nation as a whole--people pondered this question: Did Dr. Sam Sheppard kill his pregnant wife Marilyn in their Bay Village home on Lake Erie, just west of Cleveland? Certainly my mother thought ...
The circus comes to town: the media and high-profile trials.
Sep 22, 2008; ... INTRODUCTION The time to plan for a hurricane is not when the storm is thirty miles off-coast barreling toward shore, but on a tranquil, sunny day. Similarly, the time to plan for a high-profile trial is before a half-dozen satellite trucks, the network advance team, and a ...
Moving beyond media feast and frenzy: imagining possibilities for hyper-resilience arising from scandalous organizational crisis.
Sep 22, 2008; ... I INTRODUCTION When an organization finds itself mired in scandalous crisis, it is often impossible to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel--or to imagine that anything good can be realized once the organization emerges from that tunnel. Most ...
The transformation of international comity.
Jun 22, 2008; ... I INTRODUCTION Private international law reflects and shapes the contours of public and private law in ways that demarcate the boundaries of state sovereignty and allocate power among public and private actors. When courts decide on the reach of domestic and foreign ...