The Law of Evidence: Fact Finding, Fairness, and Advocacy

"This text provides a uniquely well considered and systematic approach to the study of legal evidence. The authors have adopted a tripartite organization that introduces readers to three separate phases of evidence management. In the Fact Finding segment, readers learn, with the help of an extensive excerpt from a legal transcript, how facts are determined or constructed, how such issues as relevance, reliability, and compellability of witnesses are determined, and how the issue of doubt is dealt with. In the Fairness segment, the authors encourage their readers to consider how issues such as respect for privacy, the interests of justice, and the rights of accused persons influence evidence gathering and admissibility. Finally, in the segment on Advocacy, the readers are introduced not only to the skills that make a good advocate, but also to the ethical considerations that inform decisions made in the course of interpreting and presenting evidence."--Pub. desc.