7561. Evidence Law and Critical Theory

Evidence law and scholarship traditionally has assumed a set of facially neutral rules and principles applied by using logical reasoning by impartial arbiters. This course will focus on what the traditional orientation towards evidence law misses. Evidence rules are neither wholly trans-substantive or neutral in design or deployment. A growing area of legal scholarship, Critical Evidence Law, deploys critical legal theories from critical race, feminism, queer theory, disability studies, and political economy to surface core assumptions and values that shape the legal rules, doctrine, and practice of evidence law. These theories offer epistemic opportunities to reimagine the regulation of proof and, ultimately, address existing inequities in institutional designs and outcomes. This course will foreground scholarship that explores the ways that the system of proof is systematically failing certain groups and benefitting others as well as efforts to reshape evidence rules and doctrines in response to this scholarship.