Obviously, there is no easy answer to this question. The best I can do is tell you what I got out of the course, and hope it lines up with what you were trying to convey.
Obviously, there is no easy answer to this question. The best I can do is tell you what I got out of the course, and hope it lines up with what you were trying to convey.
Perhaps the most fundamental thing I have learned in the class (in addition to the substantive lessons in evidence and copyright law) is how you free yourself from constraints as a method of learning how to work within them.
Take, for example, the cyber-brief notion. The first step is to shed the shackles of blue and red-covered booklets in favor of a more dynamic and multifaceted medium. As a result, the kinds of advocacy and persuasion which are appropriate in that new medium change as well. Traditional legal scholarship must be supplemented in an online brief with argument and evidence tailored to the public, and which take advantage of the differences between HTML and paper. In working on our group project, we realized that omitting any use of pictures, sounds, or video would not only make our cyber-brief boring, but in the new medium, with the new audience, it would make it ineffectual. Our paradigm shifted from one of strictly academic and doctrinal advocacy to one of which includes attention-getting and entertainment as advocacy.
What is particularly exciting is that the skills one acquires when the boundaries are lifted add to one’s mastery of the art within its boundaries. For example, working on a cyber-brief, we have rediscovered the importance of cultivating and maintaining the audience’s interest. This attentiveness to the reader’s interest is also applicable, however, within the realm of the traditional brief. Although a traditional brief will not contain video clips, it can be written with an eye on involving the judge with the material. The more the judge is engaged in the brief, the better the chances the legal arguments have of taking hold in the judge’s mind.
The application to Yale Law School is different from other schools in that it has a free-form essay on any topic instead of the standard personal statement. In my essay, I wrote about how excited I was to be a member of the Class of 2000. In the first few semesters of law school, that excitement has been dulled. What difference does it make to be in the Class of 2000 if you are studying the same cases the Class of 1900 did? This class has reawakened some of that excitement in me. Modernity does present challenges to the law that did not exist before. Many of those problems will be played out through the law of evidence. For example, we spent some time talking about the difficult dynamic between the scientific knowledge (or more accurately, the limits of scientific certainty) and the jury system. I think that is a fascinating question, and being aware of it, I look forward to working on solutions once I am in practice. Just as interesting, I think, are the issues of speed and technology. We all know that major trials can last a decade. I think there will be increasing tension between a society that operates in realtime, that runs on instantaneous communication and that worships efficiency, and a justice system that lags further and further behind.
It is often said that if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. I think the "Evidence, Truth, Internet" class is perhaps the first HLS class I have had which is not part of the problem. This is not just due to the class’ emphasis on internet and technology. It is because such a strong emphasis is put on creative thinking about the law, and challenging its limits as a means of working within them. This lesson is particularly well suited, I think, for an evidence class. Rather than being another branch of the substantive law, such as contracts or torts, evidence is the discipline of proof and persuasion. Evidence turns more on human nature and the public, twelve at a time in a jury box. The challenges of lining up the law with modern society are perhaps best resolved in this area, the point of contact between the solicitors and society.
You are, no doubt, trying to teach us a variety of things, and most likely, different things for different students. For me, the most valuable lesson is that excellence in my field may be best achieved by rejecting the limits on my field.