Promoting Truth in the Courtroom

It is a distinct privilege to be with you and to join my predecessors as Attorney General-Elliot Richardson, Judge Griffin Bell,and William French Smith-in becoming a Cecil Sims Lecturer.One of the best features of university life is the freedom it affords to pursue the search for knowledge. In virtually all disciplines an understanding of certain truths, of the way various historical or scientific facts fit together, is an important starting point for further learning and deliberation. The search for truth is also a tremendously important undertaking beyond the campus walls,especially in the realm of criminal justice. That endeavor, the effort to arrive at an accurate assessment of the truth or falsity of charges of criminal misconduct, is the subject of my remarks today.To most of us the point of a criminal trial is to determine whether the defendant did what he is accused of and to impose a just sentence if he is convicted on the basis of that determination.Getting the correct answer in this context is of the utmost importance. Mistakes in one direction will falsely brand innocent people as criminals and punish them unjustly. Mistakes in the other direction, freeing guilty defendants, also have dire consequences.Dangerous individuals may be set loose upon society, public respect for the legal system may be diminished, and, most importantly, justice will not be done. The objectives of protecting the public from the offender and deterring others from committing crimes cannot be achieved if guilt is not accurately established.These objectives are not casual concerns, but the basic reasons that a criminal justice system exists. If the truth cannot be discovered and acted on, the criminal justice system fails in its basic mission. Indeed, the state itself fails in its most fundamental responsibility. Accordingly, I\u27m reminded of the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., the Justice\u27s father, who said: Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. \u27If you\u27ll pardon the expression, there are too many ways truth is kept out of play today in the arenas of our courts. We need to look seriously at the various ways in which truth finding has been frustrated. My purpose today is to consider whether the vital objective of truth has been subordinated to other interests and whether the hurdles placed between the facts on the one hand and the judge or jury on the other can be justified. There are, of course, many such hurdles. I won\u27t talk about all of them. But let me focus my attention on several of the most significant

The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, Second Edition: What Has Changed Over the Past Decade, and What Lies Ahead?

The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, first released in 2005, brought together more than 100 of the nation’s best legal experts to provide line-by-line examination of each clause of the Constitution and its contemporary meaning—the first such comprehensive commentary to appear in many decades. The Heritage Guide to the Constitution: Fully Revised Second Edition takes into account a decade of Supreme Court decisions and legal scholarship on such issues as gun rights, religious freedom, campaign finance, civil rights, and health care reform. The Founders’ guiding principles remain unchanged, yet a number of Supreme Court decisions over the past decade remind us that those principles still require constant and spirited defense. What is needed today is a fusion of judicial originalism, scholarly originalism, and political originalism to advance the Founders’ vision for our Constitution