How \u3ci\u3eDaubert\u3c/i\u3e and its Progeny Have Failed Criminalistics Evidence and a Few Things the Judiciary Could Do About It.

Part I documents how courts have failed to faithfully apply Daubert’s criteria for scientific validity to this type of evidence. It describes how ambiguities and flaws in the terminology adopted in Daubert combinedwith the opaqueness of forensic-science publications and standards have been exploited to shield some test methods from critical judicial analysis. Simply desisting from these avoidance strategies would be an improvement. Part II notes how part of the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael has enabled courts to lower the bar for what is presented as scientific evidence by mistakenly maintaining that there is no difference between that evidence and other expert testimony that need not be scientifically validated. It suggests that a version of Rule 702 that explicitly insists on more rigorous validation of evidence that is promoted or understood as being “scientific” would be workable and more clearly compatible with the rule’s common law roots. Part III sketches various meanings of the terms “reliability” and “validity” in science and statistics, on the one hand, and in the rules and opinions on the admissibility of expert evidence, on the other. It discusses the two-part definition of “validity” in the PCAST report and the proposed criteria for demonstrating scientific validity of subjective pattern-matching testimony. It contends that if “validity” means that a procedure (even a highly subjective one) for making measurements and drawing inferences is fit for its intended use, then whether test results that have higher error rates than the ones selected in the report might nevertheless assist fact finders who are also appropriately informed of the evidence’s probative value must be evaluated. Finally, Part IV articulates two distinct approaches to informing judges or jurors of the import of similarities in features: the traditional one in which examiners opine on the truth and falsity of source hypotheses and a more finely grained one in which criminalists report only on the strength of the evidence. It suggests that the rules for admitting scientific evidence need to be flexible enough to accommodate the latter, likelihood-based testimony when it has a satisfactory empirically established basis

What We Don\u27t Know About Class Actions but Hope to Know Soon

Legislation that would alter class action practice in the federal courts has been pending in Congress. Nearly a decade’s worth of U.S. Supreme Court cases have restricted the scope and ease of use of the class action device. Class action critics argue that class litigation is a “racket” that fails to compensate plaintiffs and instead enriches plaintiffs’ lawyers at the expense of legitimate business practices. On the other hand, defenders of class actions decry the legislative and judicial forces aligned against them, warning that trends in class action law will eviscerate the practical rights held by consumers and workers. In short, there is considerable controversy over whether class actions are an economic menace or a boon to the little guys. We have two purposes in this brief Article. First, we wish to focus continuing attention on the need for more empirical information about the actual functioning of the federal class action system. Second, we wish to share our current efforts to use a one-of-a-kind collection of docket reports, originally harvested from Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER), to fill the empirical gap. Presentation of empirical findings resulting from this effort awaits a future article. However, this Article includes suggestions as to how the federal judiciary and Administrative Office of the United States Courts (“AO”) could improve data management and data reporting so as to make information about federal class actions more accessible to scholars and others interested in how the class action device operates in practice and what reforms, if any, would be advisable

Quantum surveillance and 'shared secrets'. A biometric step too far? CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe, July 2010

It is no longer sensible to regard biometrics as having neutral socio-economic, legal and political impacts. Newer generation biometrics are fluid and include behavioural and emotional data that can be combined with other data. Therefore, a range of issues needs to be reviewed in light of the increasing privatisation of ‘security’ that escapes effective, democratic parliamentary and regulatory control and oversight at national, international and EU levels, argues Juliet Lodge, Professor and co-Director of the Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence at the University of Leeds, U

What Makes A Court Problem-Solving: Universal Performance Indicators for Problem-Solving Justice

This report identifies a set of universal performance indicators for specialized "problem-solving courts" and related experiments in problem-solving justice. Traditional performance indicators related to caseload and processing efficiency can assist court managers in monitoring case flow, assigning cases to judges, and adhering to budgetary and statutory due process guidelines. Yet, these indicators are ultimately limited in scope. Faced with the recent explosion of problem solving courts and other experiments seeking to address the underlying problems of litigants, victims, and communities, there is an urgent need to complement traditional court performance indicators with ones of a problem-solving nature. With funding from the State Justice Institute (SJI), the Center for Court Innovation conducted an investigation designed to achieve three purposes. The first was to establish a set of universal performance indicators against which to judge the effectiveness of specialized problem-solving courts, of which there are currently more than 3,000 nationwide. The second purpose was to develop performance indicators specific to each of the four major problem-solving court models: drug, mental health, domestic violence, and community courts. The third purpose was to assist traditional court managers by establishing a more limited set of indicators, designed to capture problem-solving activity throughout the courthouse, not only within a specialized court context

Environmental Compliance, Corruption and Governance: Theory and Evidence on Forest Stock in Developing Countries

This paper analyses the relationships between environmental compliance, corruption and environmental regulations in the case of forestry. Using a Principal-Agent model, we highlight interrelationships between firm's environmental non-compliance and corruption conditioned to the efficiency of the legal and regulatory framework. Moreover, we show that environmental compliance and judicial efficiency may be complementary or substitutable depending on the level of judicial efficiency to strengthen the forest stock. After having design a new indicator of environmental compliance, we test these predictions using cross section data for 59 developing countries. The empirical results support the predictions of the model. Judicial efficiency reduces corruption and environmental non compliance which are positively correlated and conditioned to judicial efficiency. We also find empirical evidences on the substitutability and complementarity of environmental compliance and judicial efficiency to preserve the forest stock.corruption, Environmental compliance, Forest Stock, political economy, governance