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Professor Peter Tillers of Cardozo Law School in New York blogs for JURIST on the latest evidence issues...
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Sunday, October 05, 2003

Legal Theory and Legal Practice: A Manifesto

Decent legal theory follows legal practice.

Bad legal theory ignores legal practice.

Good legal theory improves legal practice.

Legal theory without legal reality is barren.

Legal reality is legal practice.

Legal practice is legal theory in action.

Good legal theory is good legal practice made manifest.

In the spirit of Aristotle ... and the new sciences of the mind.

Posted by Peter Tillers at 12:24 PM
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Trial Planning

Trial lawyers: Does the diagram available at the link below accurately depict some (but certainly not all) of the important jobs that you have to do when you prepare for trial? If so, is the diagram helpful to you -- or might it be helpful to you -- when you go about the job of preparing for trial? (I am assuming that the picture is fairly self-explanatory. If such is not the case, please let me know. Many thanks!)

Trial Planning
Posted by Peter Tillers at 10:50 AM
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Archive of Tillers on Evidence

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Professor Peter Tillers

"I have practiced a little bit of law -- I worked as a litigator, once in California and once in Texas -- but for most of my professional life I have studied and taught law.

In the early part of my academic career I dabbled in philosophy, particularly the philosophies of Kant and Hegel. But as I matured, I came to my senses. This explains why during the last 15 years I have devoted much more attention to evidence, inference, and proof in litigation than to German Idealism and similar matters. However, I did not succeed in completely obliterating the influence of philosophy and epistemology on my thinking. Thus, in my effort to understand and explain the process of proof in litigation, I have devoted a great deal of attention to matters such as probability theory and theories of evidence, inference, induction, and proof.

Peter Tillers is Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University. He revised volumes 1 &1A of Wigmore on Evidence (1983) and is the author of Probability and Inference in the Law of Evidence (1988; with E. Green).