Evidence: Practice, Problems, and Rules, Fourth Edition

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Offering a tested selection of interesting modern cases that help students learn the rules, recognize difficult issues of application, examine the policy choices inherent in the rules, and build their case-reading and analytical skills, Evidence: Practice, Problems and Rules, Fourth Edition is focused on preparing students for bar passage and law practice. Concise notes, relatively few in number, maximize the likelihood that students will engage with them. Examples of provocative minority approaches frame the Federal Rules choices. Essay-style problems and multiple-choice questions are presented throughout, with suggested analyses for every problem provided in the Teachers Manual.

New to the 4th Edition:

• Covers recent changes to the Federal Rules residual hearsay exception and the trend towards strengthened judicial control over admissibility of expert opinion that may have only weak support.
• United States v. Gallagher (4th Cir. 2024), offering a modern illustration of out-of-court words that are not hearsay because they are introduced to show their effect on a person who reads them.
• Shellman v. State (Georgia 2024), which applies a state’s residual exception in conjunction with a state precedent allowing consideration of how the statement is consistent with other evidence in the case.
• United States v. Huskey (4th Cir. 2024), which examines weak corroboration as a basis for rejecting admissibility under the residual exception.
• Reflects Rules amendments, effective in December 2024, related to extrinsic evidence of prior inconsistent statements, treatment of a predecessor-in-interest’s statements as an opponent’s statement when offered against a successor-in-interest, and broadening the corroborating circumstances a court must consider in applying the hearsay exception for statements against penal interest.

Professors and student will benefit from:

• Clear organization.
• Straightforward introduction to each section and case.
• Modern interesting cases that reinforce reading and analytical skills; remembering the rules; recognizing difficult issues of application; examining the policy choices inherent in the rules.
• Concise notes; relatively few in number; maximize the likelihood that students will engage with them.
• Examples of provocative minority approaches to frame the Federal Rules choices.