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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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Saturday, December 25, 2004
Science in Legal Education

David L. Faigman, Legal Alchemy: The Use and Misuse of Science in the Law xi-xii (2nd Paperback Printing, 1999, 2000):

... The average lawyer is not merely ignorant of science, he or she has an affirmative aversion to it. ...
...[L]aw students feel no sense of urgency in learning about science. It is not tested on state bar exams. ... From [the students'] vantage point, science is not a necessary part of legal education.
Most of the fault for this misperception lies with the law schools. ... Law students have no sense of urgency about science because their professors do not. ...
...
Without question, law schools will eventually respond to the overwhelming presence of science in the legal process. They have no choice. For now, however, an entire generation of lawyers is being trained without the critical or practical skills to understand what is and what will continue to be an essential part of the lawyer's job description.

Posted by Peter Tillers at 4:16 PM
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Friday, December 24, 2004
Christmas Eve, 2004

There was a time in my life when 1984 lay far in the future. It was George Orwell's 1984. But 1984 came and went. And now it is 2004. And things aren't half-bad.

Merry Chistmas, Season's Greetings, or -- Whatever!

Have a very good new year, y'all.

And remember: always keep the evidence before you. That's the key to the truth.

Posted by Peter Tillers at 12:45 AM
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Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Facial Profiling

I recently submitted a paper that deals in part with "facial profiling" -- or so I said in my paper.

Now there's a novel law journal topic for you!

Posted by Peter Tillers at 9:18 PM
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Sunday, December 19, 2004
Evidentiary Burdens

It is an error to think that an individual can escape being subjected to inferences that depend on observations and judgments about the behavior and attributes of other human beings. Not in a pig's eye! No one can altogether avoid being saddled with signs, signposts, and evidentiary hints that the operations of the world and other people have created.

Posted by Peter Tillers at 1:11 PM
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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).