Abstract
Biased evidence rules, those that permit one party to use a kind or class of evidence while prohibiting the other from using it, give adversaries unequal weapons. Truth seems less likely to emerge from an adversarial testing when participants do not have the same devices to demonstrate strengths and weaknesses in the competing claims. Since a good evidence law should aid the determination of truth, neutral evidence rules should be required. In reality, however, all evidence principles are not impartial between the parties. The Federal Rules of Evidence sometimes grant evidentiary mechanisms to just one class of parties. Although principles of our adversary system ought to make such rules suspect, the courts can and should reform only some of them. Courts and legislators, driven by differing reasons, have produced the biased provisions. Categorizing those reasons provides the analytical starting point for the judicial treatment of biased evidence rules.
Recommended Citation
Jonakait, Randolph N.
(1992)
"Biased Evidence Rules: A Framework for
Judicial Analysis and Reform,"
Utah Law Review: Vol. 1992:
No.
1, Article 2.
Available at:
https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol1992/iss1/2