evidence

New Article on Racial Bias in Evidence Rules

Ann Tweedy1 Comment

Jasmine Gonzales Rose has posted Toward a Critical Race Theory of Evidence on ssrn. The article is forthcoming in the Minnesota Law Review.

Here’s the abstract:

Scholars, judges, and lawyers have long believed that evidence rules apply equally to all persons regardless of race. This Article challenges this assumption and reveals how evidence law structurally disadvantages people of color. A critical race analysis of stand-your-ground defenses, cross-racial eyewitness misidentifications, and minority flight from racially-targeted police profiling and violence uncovers the existence of a dual-race evidentiary system. This system is reminiscent of nineteenth century race-based witness competency rules that barred people of color from testifying against white people. I deconstruct this problem and introduce the original concept of “racialized reality evidence.” This construct demonstrates how evidence of people of color’s lived experiences of systemic racism are regularly excluded at trial, while evidence of white norms and beliefs receives “implicit judicial notice.” Finally, I advocate for a new critical race theory of evidence law and offer solutions — including a reinterpretation of Federal Rule of Evidence 403 — to increase equality in the courtroom.

New Scholarship on Mapping Intergenerational Memories

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Robert Hershey, Jennifer McCormack, and Gillian E. Newell have posted “Mapping Intergenerational Memories (Part I): Proving the Contemporary Truth of the Indigenous Past” on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

How Indigenous communities choose to represent spaces or spatial information is integral to constructing and archiving cultural memory, articulating current environmental use, and dealing with evidentiary issues for title or land claim cases. For Indigenous communities around the world, the legacy of Western (often, colonial) cartography and spatial theory is disconnected from the many distinct narratives of space (and time) in Native communities.

Specifically in legal situations, this disconnect often reflects a power struggle between a Western, Cartesian division of space and time, and a relational, dynamic capitulation of space and time by an Indigenous group. Indigenous communities attempting to utilize Western legal forums for recognition of their rights face evidentiary hurdles caused by the ethnocentrism inherently built into legal systems. Although exceptions exist to hearsay rules, which allow oral history to be admitted as evidence and are common in multiple jurisdictions, fact finders are not comfortable placing conclusive weight on intergenerational memories. This discomfort is based on Western society’s ideas about what constitutes reality and reliability and results in Indigenous communities being held to strictly Western and often overly lineal principles. Indigenous communities need concrete methods to bring their intergenerational memories into Western courtrooms and have lawyers and judges receive and understand these fully and from an Indigenous standpoint.