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Progress Is Our Only Product: Legal Reform and the Codification of Evidence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 December 2018
Abstract
Twentieth-century reform of the American law of evidence was initially premised on the ideals of legal progressivism, ideals splintered by American legal realism. In preparing the American Law Institute's Model Code of Evidence from 1939 to 1942, Harvard Law School professor Edmund M. Morgan attempted to reconstitute the framework of reform in light of the challenge of legal realism. The Model Code was based on granting greater discretion to the trial judge and changing the goals of the trial from a search for truth to a “rational” resolution of disputes. In large part due to these apparently radical and “corrosive” changes, the Model Code failed to win professional support and was not adopted by any state. The structure of the Model Code was used for the two subsequent evidence codification efforts, the Uniform Rules of Evidence and the Federal Rules of Evidence. These codification efforts found greater academic favor in part because they fit within the post-World War II jurisprudence of reasoned elaboration. The Federal Rules also enjoyed extraordinary professional favor because the drafters explicitly affirmed truth as the goal of the rules. The irony is that the framework of the Federal Rules, since they are based on the Model Code, contradicts this message.
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References
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89 See Wigmore, , 22 A.B.A.J. at 813 (cited in note 68) (noting the infeasibility of offering a code of federal evidence rules when there was no existing state code of evidence). See also 4 Proceedings of Meeting of Advisory Committee on Rules for Civil Procedure of the Supreme Court of the United States 974 (20–25 Feb. 1936). quoted in Burbank, 63 Notre Dame L Rev. 718 n.187 (cited in note 77) (“In a discussion about the original Advisory Committee's power to recommend Federal Rules on matters of evidence, Professor Morgan observed: I think, if you put that up to the Court, they would say, as the servant girl said, “It is such a little baby.” (Laughter)”).Google Scholar
90 See Burbank, , 130 U. Pa. L. Rev. at 1137–43 (cited in note 56) (discussing the Advisory Committee's concerns about their power to draft federal rules of evidence and their distinguishing rules regarding the mode of taking evidence and rules regarding the admissibility of evidence).Google Scholar
91 “Report of the Committee on Improvements in the Law of Evidence,” 63 A.B.A. Rep. 570 (1938) (“‘Report on Improvements’”).Google Scholar
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94 Id. at 571. The final general proposal adopted by the committee urged that state legislatures “make no changes in the rules of evidence without due notice and opportunity of hearing to the state and local bar associations.”Id. at 580. This was another tenet of progressivism, which distrusted the political nature of legislatures in favor of the “nonpolitical” impartiality of experts.Google Scholar
95 Id. at 576–77.Google Scholar
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97 No more than 44 Advisory Committee members voted on any one proposal.Google Scholar
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100 17 ALI Proc. 64–65 (1940).Google Scholar
101 These Postulates formed the basis of Wigmore's Code of Evidence, the second edition of which had been published in 1935 (“Wigmore. Code 2d”).Google Scholar
102 Id. A third edition of the Code of Evidence was published in 1942, shortly before the ALI adopted the Model Code of Evidence.Google Scholar
103 See American Law Institute, Code of Evidence Tentative Draft No. 1 (Appendix) 112 (1940) (“ALI, Code”).Google Scholar
104 See id. at 115; see also 17 ALI Proc. 66–70 (1940). Postulate IV stated: This Code, in aiming as it does to become a practical guide in trials, must not be content with abstractions, but must specifically deal with all the concrete rules exemplifying the application of an abstraction, that have been passed upon in a majority of jurisdictions; the Code specifically either repudiating or affirming these rules.—If the objection be made that the law of Evidence should no longer remain a network of petty detailed rules, the answers are, first, that both Bench and Bar need their guidance in order that a normal routine be ordinarily followed for speedy dispatch at trials without discussion; secondly, that the Bar needs them in order to prepare evidence for trial among normal expected lines; and, thirdly, that the really effective way to eliminate the present frequent overemphasis on detailed concrete rules, is to provide that they shall be only guides, not chains—directory, not mandatory,—and therefore to forbid the review of the Trial Court's rulings, except in extreme instances.Google Scholar
See ALI, Code (Appendix) 111–12 (emphasis in original).Google Scholar
105 I Wigmore, Treatise at § 8a (3d ed. 1940) (cited in note 13).Google Scholar
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107 Wigmore, Preface, Code 2d at xiii (cited in note 101). See note 104.Google Scholar
108 17 ALI Proc. 70 (1940).Google Scholar
109 Edmund M. Morgan, Foreword, in American Law Institute, Model Code of Evidence 4 (Philadelphia: American Law Institute, 1942) (‘Morgan, Foreword’). Morgan believed that it was wishful thinking to expect the trial court to take an exclusively intellectual approach to matters of evidence, and to understand detailed rules as directory rather than mandatory, or to expect trial or appellate courts to clearly demarcate the line between issues of fact and issues of law in evidence. See also Edmund M. Morgan, “The Model Code of Evidence,” 39 Proc. Vt. B. Ass'n 94, 100 (1945) (“If a trial is to be a rational proceeding with a competent judge in charge, he must be given a large measure of discretion. A trial cannot be a purely mechanical performance”). In an earlier book review, Morgan stated, “To be sure, the jury is often swayed by sympathy and prejudice; but are trial judges motivated solely by intellectual impulses?” Edmund M. Morgan, Book Review, 46 Harv. L. Rev. 1203, 1203 (1933), reviewing Joseph N. Ulman, A Judge Takes the Stand (1933).Google Scholar
110 See 17 ALI Proc. 82 (1940). This was consistent with the structure of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which Clark, as Reporter to the Advisory Committee, had been instrumental in drafting. ABA members were made aware of this difference of opinion among Clark, Morgan, and Wigmore in the June 1940 issue of the ABA Journal, which reported the institute's discussion of Tentative Draft No. 1 of the Model Code of Evidence. See “American Law Institute Holds Eighteenth Annual Meeting,” 26 A.B.A.J. 476 (1940).Google Scholar
111 See Morgan, Foreword at 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
112 All had the same title. Morgan, Edmund M., “The Code of Evidence Proposed by the American Law Institute,” 27 A.B.A.J. 539 (Sept. 1941); 27 A.B.A.J. 587 (Oct. 1941); 27 A.B.A.J. 694 (Nov. 1941); 27 A.B.A.J. 742 (Dec. 1941).Google Scholar
113 Morgan, , 27 A.B.A.J. at 541.Google Scholar
114 Id. In his Foreword to the Model Code of Evidence (at 12), published in fall 1942, Morgan added: “It would give the restatement a legislative form, make it rigid and hamper the normal growth of the law.”.Google Scholar
115 Morgan, , 27 A.B.A.J. at 541.Google Scholar
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120 “Sessions of American Law Institute,” 28 A.B.A.J 401 (1942).Google Scholar
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122 See “Spotlight on Evidence,” 27 J. Am. Jud. Soc'y 113, 115 (1943). The ALI's official position was that it did not “urge the immediate recommendation of the Code as a whole by a bar association or its adoption by a legislature or a court. Rather, it submits the work to the legal profession of the country, on its merits, for such action as the bench and bar feel prepared to take after the work has become known.”Id. at 113.Google Scholar
123 University of Texas Professor Charles T. McCormick, A member of the Evidence Editorial group, coordinated the discussion of the Model Code of Evidence at the 1943 Texas State Bar Association meeting. Id. at 114.Google Scholar
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125 69 A.B.A. Rep. 185 (1944). The report of the committee on Jurisprudence and Law Reform is found at 69 A.B.A. Rep. 251.Google Scholar
126 “Report of Committee on Administration of Justice on Model Code of Evidence,” 19 J. St. B. Calif 262 (1944). I assume that this rhetoric was an attempt to equate the Model Code with the evil of the civil law system. The Model Code's radical reformation of the law of evidence was not modeled on civil law, although, like civil law, it gave greater power to the trial judge and less to the attorneys.Google Scholar
127 30 A.B.A.J. 700 (1944). A number of addresses were given and articles written for state bar associations from 1941 to 1944 by supporters of the Code and members of the Evidence Editorial group, but nothing was printed in the ABA Journal.Google Scholar
128 There is nothing in the 1945 or 1946 ABA Journals or ABA Reports on reform of the law of evidence. In 72 A.B.A. Rep. 253 (1947), There is the following from the ABA Committee on Improving the Administration of Justice: “The committee in Missouri is cooperating with a committee of the Missouri Bar in its work on a new code of Evidence.” The State Bar of Missouri drafted a proposed Code based on reformation of Missouri rules of evidence rather than on the Model Code. See Symposium, “A Code of Evidence for Missouri,” 17 U.K.C.L. Rev. 1 (1949). See also “Notes and Comments on the Code of Evidence Proposed by the Missouri Bar,” 10 J. Mo. B. 177 (1954).Google Scholar
129 On the last point, see 21 Wright & Graham, Federal Practice at § 5005.Google Scholar
130 See Morgan, Law of Evidence 66–68 (cited in note 48).Google Scholar
131 See Wigmore, , 22 A.B.A.J. at 24 (cited in note 49). Compare Wigmore, “Preface,” in Wigmore, Code 2d at xiii (cited in note 101) (suggesting that particular rules would be guides, not chains, thus giving the trial court greater authority to decide evidentiary issues without fear of appellate reversal).Google Scholar
132 Id.“What the law of Evidence, and of Procedure, nowadays most needs is that the men who are our judges and our lawyers shall firmly dispose themselves to get at the truth and the merits of the case before them.”.Google Scholar
133 Lewis, “Introduction” at viii (cited in note 98).Google Scholar
134 Morgan, , 27 A.B.A.J. at 539 (cited in note 112). This is repeated in essence in Morgan, Foreword at 3 (cited in note 109). This view is foreshadowed in a 1936 book review, in which Morgan suggested that the book be read by no one interested in believing “that a law suit is a proceeding for the discovery of truth by rational processes.” Morgan, Edmund M., Book Review, 49 Harv. L Rev. 1387, 1389 (1936), reviewing Irving Goldstein, Trial Technique (1935). See also Edmund M. Morgan, “Hearsay Dangers and the Application of the Hearsay Concept,” 62 Harv. L. Rev. 177, 184 (1948).Google Scholar
135 Morgan, , Foreword at 3–4. A similar statement is made in Morgan, 27 A.B.A.J. at 539.Google Scholar
136 Wright & Graham, Federal Ractice at § 5005 n.45. See also Leon Green, Judge and Jury 376 (Kansas City, Mo.: Vernon Law Book Co., 1930) (concluding that judicial approval of the jury trial was based on its “prime political function” of absorbing citizen discontent with verdicts). A similar statement by legal process scholars Henry Hart and John McNaughton is found in “Evidence and Inference in the Law,” 87 Daedalus 40, 44 (1958) (“Hart & McNaughton, ‘Evidence and Inference’”): “A contested lawsuit is society's last line of defense in the indispensable effort to secure the peaceful settlement of social conflicts.”.Google Scholar
137 See text accompanying notes 162–64. See also Morgan, 27 A.B.A.J. at 541 (disparaging the view “that the trial is to be a battle between the great champions of the contending parties; a battle of wits between their lawyers with the judge as umpire and the jury making the decision without advice from the judge”).Google Scholar
138 19 J. St. B. Calif. at 281 (cited in note 126).Google Scholar
139 G. Louis Joughin & Edmund M. Morgan, The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti 184 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1948) (“Joughin & Morgan, Sacco and Vanzetti”). According to the Preface, Morgan was the sole author of the chapters concerning the law of the Sacco and Vanzetti case. Id at v–vi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
140 Morgan, , 27 A.B.A.J. at 540; Morgan, Foreword at 6.Google Scholar
141 Wigmore, Treatise at § 8c (3d ed. 1940) (cited in note 13). See also “Report on Improvements” at 576 (cited in note 91) (“All will agree that the body of the rules of evidence, in their skeleton framework, are wise and wholesome; in short, they are a valuable and unique contribution to the world's expedients in the investigation of truth”).Google Scholar
142 “Report on Improvements” at 572 So in any proposed improvement of a rule of law, it is wise at the same time to take measures to insure a suitable environment and administration. Any proposed improvement in the rules of evidence must heed the same warning”); see also Twining, Theories of Evidence 161 (cited in note 4) (“Wigmore's assumption [was] that the law of evidence is par excellence ‘lawyer's law.’ Wigmore was only mildly critical of surviving evidence doctrine. A general simplification and the abolition of a few archaic survivals would be welcome, but on the whole there was no need for radical reform” (footnotes omitted)).Google Scholar
143 21 Wright, & Graham, , Federal Practice at § 5005 n.45.Google Scholar
144 Some secondary studies about legal realism not elsewhere cited in this article include Grant Gilmore, ‘Legal Realism: Its Cause and Cure,’ 70 Yale L.J. 1037 (1961); Id, The Death of Contract (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974); Wilfrid E. Rumble, Jr., American Legal Realism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1968); Thomas W. Bechtler, ed., American Legal Realism Reevaluated in Law in a Social Context: Liber Amicorum Honouring Professor Lon L. Fuller 1 (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer, 1978); and Robert Summers, instrumentalism and American Legal Theory (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982). See generally Joseph William Singer, “Legal Realism Now,” 76 Calif. L Rev. 465, 476 n. 40 (1988) (listing primary and secondary sources regarding American legal realism).Google Scholar
145 See Llewellyn, Karl, “A Realistic Jurisprudence—The Next Step,” 30 Colum. L. Rev 431 (1930).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
146 In addition, through its reliance on the learning in psychology, sociology, as well as non-Euclidean geometry, see Purcell, Crisis of Democratic Theory 74–94 (cited in note 14), realism also suggested an empirical advance over the primitive empiricism of sociological jurisprudence. The empirical “advances” made by the realists are extremely well depicted by Professor John Henry Schlegel. See his “American Legal Realism and Empirical Social Science: From the Yale Experience,” 28 Buffalo L. Rev. 459 (1979); Id., ‘American Legal Realism and Empirical Social Science: The Singular Case of Underhill Moore,’ 29 Buffalo L. Rev. 195 (1980).Google Scholar
147 Pound, Roscoe, “The Call for a Realistic Jurisprudence,” 44 Harv. L. Rev 697 (1931).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
148 Llewellyn granted from Yale Law School in 1918 at the top of his class. He was the editor-in-chief of the Yale Law loud and stayed a year after graduating to ensure the journal's continued publication. After working for National City Bank (the predecessor of Citicorp) and the law firm of Shearman & Sterling, he began teaching at Yale in 1922. Llewellyn became a professor at Columbia in 1925 and stayed there until 1951, when he began teaching at the University of Chicago law school. He died in 1962. Llewellyn was influenced by his teachers Arthur Corbin and Wesley Hohfeld, who were intellectual parents to legal realism. A biography of the work of Llewellyn is William Twining, Karl Lkwellyn and the Realist Movement (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973; reprinted 1985) (‘Twining, Karl Llewellyn’).Google Scholar
149 Llewellyn, , 30 Colum. L. Rev. For a revised history of the Pound-Llewellyn debate, see Hull, N. E. H., ‘Some Realism about the Llewellyn-Pound Exchange over Realism: The Newly Uncovered Private Correspondence.’ 1987 Wis. L Rev. 921.Google Scholar
150 Llewellyn, Karl, “Some Realism about Realism—Responding to Dean Pound,” 44 Ham L. Rev. 1222, 1236 (1931) (emphasis in original).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
151 Llewellyn, Karl, “On the Good, the True, the Beautiful, in Law,” 9 U. Chi. L. Rev. 224, 264 (1942). Twining, Karl Llewellyn 123–24, calls Llewellyn a moral relativist, albeit one who searched for absolute values. See also Elizabeth Mensch & Alan Freeman, “The Politics of Virtue: Animals, Theology and Abortion,” 25 Ga. L. Rev. 923, 991–92 n.222 (1991) (quoting Llewellyn, Position Re: Religion (1943), in which Llewellyn discusses his emerging religiousness).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
152 Nelles, Walter, Book Review, 33 Colum. L. Rev. 763, 767 (1933), reviewing Felix Cohen, Ethical Systems and Legal Ideals (1933) (emphasis in original), quoted in Purcell, Crisis of Democratic Theory 91 (cited in note 14).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
153 Thurman Arnold, The Symbols of Government 32–33 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1935) (“Arnold, Symbols”); Edward Robinson, Law and the Lawyers 38–43, 188–91 (New York: Macmillan Co., 1935) (“Robinson, Law and Lawyers”). These two books were the result of a seminar (locally nicknamed “The Cave of the Winds”) Arnold and Robinson taught together at Yale Law School in the early 1930s. See Arnold, Symbols v; Robinson, Law and Lawyers vii. See generally Karl Llewellyn, Book Review, 5 Brooklyn L. Rev. 219 (1935), reviewing both books.Google Scholar
154 Lon L. Fuller, The Law in Quest of Itself 5 (Chicago: Foundation Press, 1940). See also Lon L. Fuller, ‘American Legal Realism,’ 82 U. Pa. L. Rev. 429 (1934).Google Scholar
155 Morris R. Cohen, “Justice Holmes and the Nature of Law,” 31 Colum. L Rev. 352, 357 (1931). See also Id., Reason and Nature Bk. III, ch. 4 (1931), excerpted in Morris R. Cohen & Felix S. Cohen, Readings in Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy 615, 621 (1st ed. 1951): The essence of all doctrines of natural law is the appeal from positive law to justice, from the law that is to the law which ought to be; and unless we are ready to assert that the concept of a law that ought to be is for some reason an inadmissible one, the roots of natural law remain untouched. Now, it is true that the issue has seldom been so sharply put, for to do so is to espouse an amount of dualism between the is and the ought which is shocking to the philosophically respectable… There have not, of course, been wanting intellectual radicals who, in the interests of a strident monism have clearly and conscientiously attempted to eliminate the chasm between the ought and the is, either by denying the former, or by trying to reduce it to a species of the latter.” (Notes omitted On Morris Cohen and legal thought, see David Hollinger, Morris R. Cohen and the Scientific Ideal 165–99 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1975).Google Scholar
156 See Purcell, Crisis of Democratic Theory 164–72 (cited in note 14). The Catholic response was more fully developed after World War 11. See Mensch & Freeman, 25 Ga. L. Rev. at 963–85 (discussing the creation and development of the legal journal Natural Law Forum (now American Journal of Jurisprudence).Google Scholar
157 Hutcheson, Joseph, “The Judgment Intuitive: The Function of the ‘Hunch’ in Judicial Decision,” 14 Cornell L. Q274 (1929). At the beginning of the decade, New York Court of Appeals Justice Benjamin Cardozo had shocked the legal establishment by confessing in The Nature of the Judicial Process, his Storrs lectures at Yale (published by Yale University Press in 1921), that judges exercised discretion in deciding cases.Google Scholar
158 Jerome Frank, Law and the Modem Mind 111 (New York: Brentano's, 1930) (‘Frank, Law and Modem Mind’). On Frank, see Robert Jerome Glennon, The Iconoclast as Reformer: Jerome Frank's Impact on American Law (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985). See also Neil Duxbury, “Jerome Frank and the Legacy of Realism,” 18 J.L & Soc'y 175 (1991).Google Scholar
159 Arnold, Symbols 33–37, 216–19. See also Frank, Law and Modern Mind 100–101 (criticizing the notion of judging on which the ideal of the rule of law is based).Google Scholar
160 See Wigmore, , 28 A.B.A.J. at 24 (cited in note 49) (uncabined judicial discretion would return us to “that primal condition of chaos”).Google Scholar
161 See Purcell, Crisis of Democratic Theory 161–62 (Cited in note 14) (discussing Pound's reaction to the perceived excesses of realism).Google Scholar
162 Arnold, Symbols 129. See also id, “Trial by Combat and the New Deal,” 47 Harv. L Rev. 913 (1934) (presenting an earlier version of chapter 8 of The Symbols of Government); id., “The Role of Substantive Law and Procedure in the Legal Process,” 45 Yale L Rev. 617 (1932) (discussing the idea of the courtroom as theater); id., Book Review, 42 Yale L.J. 459 (1933), reviewing W. P. Barrett, The Trial of Jeanne D'Arc (1932); id., Book Review, 40 Yale L.J. 833 (1931), reviewing Leon Green, Judge and Jury (1930). See also Thurman Arnold & Fleming James, Cases on Trials Judgments and Appeals (St. Paul, Minn.: West, 1936) (a collection of cases, the purpose of which is to convince the reader that the system of trial is better understood as concerned with rhetorical devices rather than the rational resolution of disputes). Arnold's decision to part ways with Charles Clark in using data to reform the rules of procedure is discussed in Schlegel, 28 Buffalo L Rev. at 511–12 (cited in note 146). A sensitive description of Arnold's evolving views is Ayer, 23 Stan. L Rev. (cited in note 46). See also Gene M. Gressley, “Introduction,” in Gressley, ed., Voltaire and the Cowboy: The Letters of Thurman Arnold (Boulder, Colo.: Colorado Associated Press, 1977). Robinson, Law and Lawyers 32, 115, Wrote only in passing about the jury trial, but in the two asides indicated that it might be the case that the primary purpose of a jury trial was the “resolution of an emotional conflict-that it is only secondarily concerned with the fitting of the law to the facts.”Google Scholar
163 Frank, Law and Modern Mind 181. Frank also noted, ‘The decisions of many cases are products of irresponsible jury caprice and prejudice… [T]hat the principal witness for one of the parties is a Mason or a Catholic.… such facts often determine who will win or lose.’ Id at 177–78. See also Jerome Frank, Courts on Trial (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1949).Google Scholar
164 Leon Green, Judge and Jury 395–417 (1930). Green also complained that “[t]he trial judges' power to deal decisively with questions of evidence has constantly dwindled.”Id at 379. There is an elliptical suggestion in Roalfe, Wigmore 228 (cited in note 13), that Green supported Wigmore's view regarding the ALI's Model Code of Evidence, but the single sentence indicating support is terribly unclear.Google Scholar
165 Morgan, Edmund M., Book Review, 13 N.Y.U.L.Q. 322 (1936), Reviewing Robinson's Law and the Lawyers (cited in note 153). The review is written in the second person, in which the “you” Morgan refers to throughout the review is a reference to himself. In general, a search of the Index to Legal Periodicals indicates that professors at Harvard Law School ignored books by realists. Morgan's review is one of a very few by a Harvard Law School professor discussing a “realist” book. Since Robinson's book was the product of a seminar taught with Arnold, and since Robinson and Arnold viewed their books as collaborative efforts, it is curious that Morgan did not review Arnold's Symbols of Government and that he mentioned only in passing Robinson's collaboration with Arnold. Morgan's only public mention of Arnold is found in a speech given to the West Virginia Bar Association in 1941 concerning the Proposed Model Code of the ALL The reference is simply a joke about Arnold leaving West Virginia for Yale. See Morgan, Edmund M., ‘The Proposed Code of Evidence,’ 57 Proc. W. Va B. Ass'n 161 (1942).Google Scholar
166 Morgan, , 13 N.Y.U.L.Q at 324. Interestingly, Morgan took a swipe at Frank's Law and Modem Mind in this book review.Google Scholar
167 See Goodrich, Herbert, “Institute Bards and Yale Reviewers,” 48 Yule L.J 449 (1936).Google Scholar
168 Yale Law School Dean Clark was a member of the Advisory Committee to the Restatement of Property, and Professor Arthur Corbin was the Assistant Reporter to Samuel Williston in the Restatement of Contracts. For a convincing explanation why Corbin agreed to act as Assistant Reporter in the Restatement of Contracts, see Klau, Daniel J., Note, “What Price Certainty? Corbin, Williston, and the Restatement of Contracts,” 70 B.U.L. Rev. 511 (1990).Google Scholar
169 See, e.g., Arnold, Thurman, “The Restatement of the Law of Trusts,” 31 Colum. L. Rev 800 (1931); Clark, Charles, ‘The Restatement of the Law of Contracts,’ 42 Yule L.J. 643 (1933); Arnold, Thurman, “Institute Priests and Yale Observers—A Reply to Dean Goodrich,” 84 U. Pa. L Rev. 811 (1936).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
170 Goodrich, 48 Yak L.J.Google Scholar
171 Robinson wrote: “Our main interest, however, is in the general philosophy of the [Restatement] undertaking, which is plainly founded upon the belief that too much truth about the law is disastrously confusing and that the remedy may be found in an authoritative suppression of the facts rather than in better education of the public and the bar as to the actual psychological and sociological nature of the law.” Robinson, , Law and Lawyers 36 (cited in note 153). Goodrich, 48 Yale L.J. at 451–52.Google Scholar
172 Goodrich, , 48 Yale LJ. at 452.Google Scholar
173 Arnold, , 84 U. Pa. L Rev. 811 (1936).Google Scholar
174 Id. at 813.Google Scholar
175 See Joughin & Morgan, Sacco and Vanzetti (cited in note 139). Morgan's contributions had in part been written 20 years before publication of the book. Id. at v.Google Scholar
176 See 21 Wright & Graham, Federal Practice at § 5005.Google Scholar
177 Jerome Frank, Law and Modem Mind xi (Preface to 6th printing 1948) (cited in note 158). Frank delineated two camps of “realists,” a term he disparaged, rule skeptics and fact skeptics. The other persons categorized as fact skeptics were Leon Green, Max Radin, Thurman Arnold, and William O. Douglas, Along with himself. Id at xii. This preface was separately published in the Syracuse Law Review. See Jerome Frank, “Legal Thinking in Three Dimensions,” 1 Syracuse L Rev. 9, 11 (1949). See also Frank, Courts on Trial 74 (cited in note 163). Morgan critically responded to Frank's claims about “fact skepticism” in a review of Courts on Trial. See Morgan, Book Review, 2 J. Legal Educ. 385 (1950) (“It is difficult for me to see how anyone can teach a course in Evidence or in Procedure without emphasizing the uncertainty not only in the framing and the application of the rules but also, and especially, in the ascertainment of the facts to which the rules are to be applied”).Google Scholar
178 Included in this group were Frankfurter, Felix, Landis, James M., Powell, Thomas Reed, and Gardner, George See Kalman, , Legal Realism 49 (cited in note 1). I would add Professor Zechariah Chafee, an evidence, remedies, and constitutional law scholar, to that list.Google Scholar
179 See Purcell, , Crisis of Democratic Theory 159 (cited in note 14). Gordon, Cf. Robert, “Introduction: J. Willard Hurst and the Common Law Tradition in American Legal Historiography,” 10 Law & Soc'y Rev. 9, 38 n.85 (1975) (Suggesting a revision of Purcell's thesis).Google Scholar
180 See Jerold S. Auerbach, Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America 216 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976) (discussing the applications to ABA membership of three black lawyers in the early 1940s. The two who publicly challenged the discriminatory practices of the ABA were denied membership, while the third, who remained silent, was admitted).Google Scholar
181 See Morgan, Foreword at 13–16 (cited in note 109).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
182 Id. at 12.Google Scholar
183 Id. at 3.Google Scholar
184 Id. at 4.Google Scholar
185 Id.Google Scholar
186 Id. (emphasis added). See Frank, Law and Modern Mind.Google Scholar
187 A contemporary use of Morgan's distinction is found in the FRE Advisory Committee's Notes. See Advisory Committee's Note, Federal Rule of Evidence 403 (1975) (permitting exclusion of relevant evidence to counter the risk of “inducing decision on a purely emotional basis”).Google Scholar
188 Frank, Law and Modern Mind 147 (cited in note 158).Google Scholar
189 Wright and Graham Write that the heavy concentration of “Eastern Establishment” figures in the Evidence Editorial group also affected the reception of the Model Code of Evidence. 21 Wright & Graham, Federal Practice at § 5005 (“The Code doubtlessly suffered as well from the prejudice of many lawyers toward the Harvardians and Easterners who dominated the drafting Committee”).Google Scholar
190 Morgan, , 29 Tex. L. Rev. 587, 598 (cited in note 47).Google Scholar
191 Id.Google Scholar
192 Id. at 599.Google Scholar
193 Id. at 604.Google Scholar
194 Id. at 607–9. This flipped the progressive notion of expert bureaucratic control and played well with lawyers, concerned as always about the extraordinary discretion given administrative judges and officials.Google Scholar
195 Id. at 610.Google Scholar
196 “Prefatory Note,” in National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, Uniform Rules of Evidence 161 (1953) (“Prefatory Note”).Google Scholar
197 Id.Google Scholar
198 By the end of the drafting of the Uniform Rules, the committee was composed of Spencer A. Card, A judge from Kansas; Mason Ladd, a professor at the University of Iowa who had been a member of the committee which prepared the Model Code; Charles T. McCormick Of the University of Texas, also a member of the Model Code Committee; Lucian Morehead, a practitioner from Texas; Maynard Pirsig, a professor at the University of Minnesota; John Pryor, a practitioner in Iowa; Robert Woodside, Pennsylvania Attorney General; and Joe Estes, a Dallas, Texas, lawyer. Earlier in the drafting process, practitioners from New Jersey, Delaware, and Florida had been members of the committee.Google Scholar
199 ‘Prefatory Note’ at 162. The ALI approved the Uniform Rules of Evidence at its 1954 annual meeting. 31 ALI Proc. 44 (1954). Morgan supported approval by the ALL 31 ALI Proc. 36, 41.Google Scholar
200 ‘Prefatory Note’ at 161. See also Gard, Spencer A., “The Uniform Rules of Evidence,” 31 Tulane L. Rev. 19, 23 (1956) (“Sensible change without shock is an underlying policy of the Rules. That is the reason why the Rules take a somewhat conservative approach to the problem of hearsay”).Google Scholar
201 “Also, the general policy of the draftsmen for the Model Code in covering the matter in the form of rather broad general rules has been adopted, in preference to a policy of voluminous detail.”“Prefatory Note” at 162.Google Scholar
202 In1957, Charles Joiner sketched the history of the Federal Rules Advisory Committee's treatment or rather, lack of treatment, of the law of evidence, from the 1930s to 1956. He noted that the Advisory Committee evinced no interest in drafting rules of evidence, and that the Supreme Court had discharged the Advisory Committee in 1956. Joiner suggested to the Judicial Conference the study and adoption of uniform rules of evidence in the federal courts. Charles Joiner, “Uniform Rules of Evidence for the Federal Courts,” 20F.R.D. 429–31 (1957).Google Scholar
203 Kansas, , New Jersey, and Utah adopted versions of the Uniform Rules of Evidence, as did the Virgin Islands. The relationship between California's evidence code and the Uniform Rules is quite confused. See Graham, Kenneth W. Jr., “California's ‘Restatement’ of Evidence: Some Reflections on Appellate Repair of the Codification Fiasco,” 4 Loy. L.A.L. Rev. 279, 279 (1971) (“After studying the problem for nearly a decade the Commission came to the conclusion that what California needed was not the Uniform Rules but a Restatement of California Evidence”).Google Scholar
204 See Joiner, , 20 F.R.D. at 439.Google Scholar
205 See Henry M. Hart & Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law 161 (Cambridge, Mass.: private printing, 1958) (“Hart & Sacks, The Legal Process”). Two studies of reasoned elaboration are White, 59 Va. L. Rev. (cited in note 14), and Gary Peller, “Neutral Principles in the 1950s,” 21 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 556 (1989).Google Scholar
206 Hart & Sacks, The Legal Process 161.Google Scholar
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208 Id. See Morgan, , 13 N.Y.U.L.Q. at 323. In reviewing Robinson's book, Morgan noted, “He does not disguise the fact that a court must not only be able to come to what it regards as a righteous decision but must also be able to produce a respectable opinion in support of it.” This fits within reasoned elaboration in two respects: First, passive language that a court must “come to what it regards as a righteous decision” implicitly assumes that an inquiry whether the decision was “right” is either unanswerable or unimportant. Second, the center of reasoned elaboration was whether the court supported its decision by principled reasoning in its opinion. See also Hart & McNaughton, “Evidence and Inference” at 45 (cited in note 136) (“While it is of course important that the court be right in its determinations of fact, it is also important that the court decide the case when the parties ask for the decision and on the basis of the evidence presented. A decision must be made now, one way or the other”).Google Scholar
209 Hart & Sacks, The Legal Process 162.Google Scholar
210 See Kalman, Legal Realism 49 (cited in note 1). See note 178.Google Scholar
211 Id. at 51 (quoting an undated memorandum from Powell).Google Scholar
212 Felix Frankfurter & James Landis, The Business of the Supreme Court 243 (New York: Macmillan Co., 1928). ‘The story of these momentous political and economic issues lies concealed beneath the surface technicalities governing the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts.’Id. at vii.Google Scholar
213 See Alexander Bickel, The Least Dangerous Branch 25–26 (paper;) 2d ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986) (“Judges have, or should have, the leisure, the training, and the insulation to follow the ways of the scholar in pursuing the ends of government”).Google Scholar
214 Sutherland, The Law at Harvard 302 (cited in note 55). On Landis, see Donald R. Ritchie, James M. Landis: Dean of the Regulators (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980).Google Scholar
215 See Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law (2d ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1969).Google Scholar
216 See Hart & Sacks, The Legal Process 4–5 (cited in note 205).Google Scholar
217 Id. at 161–79.Google Scholar
218 See Amar, 102 Harv. L. Rev. at 691 (cited in note 14). See also Philip Bobbitt, Constitutional Fate 43 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982) (“It's not what judges do, Hart told us, it's how they do it”; emphasis in original). Hart & McNaughton, “Evidence and Inference” at 145 (cited in note 136).Google Scholar
219 American Law Institute, Annual Report 7 (1953).Google Scholar
220 Herbert Goodrich, Introduction, Restatement (Second) of Agency vii (St. Paul, Minn.: American Law Institute Pubs., 1959) (“Few of the rules laid down in the first edition have been changed”). The Introduction itself was dated 11 April 1958.Google Scholar
221 See also Grant Gilmore, The Ages of American Law 83–86 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977) (“Gilmore, Ages of American Law”) (discussing the joint work of the ALI and the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws supporting the drafting of the Uniform Commercial Code and its “conservative” nature).Google Scholar
222 Hart & Sacks, The Legal Process.Google Scholar
223 Henry M. Hart & Herbert Wechsler, The Federal Courts and the Federal System (Westbury, Conn.: Foundation Press, 1953).Google Scholar
224 See Wechsler, Herbert, “Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law,” 73 Haw. L. Rev. 1 (1959).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
225 Herbert Wechsler, Introduction, Restatement (Second) of Conflicts vii (St. Paul, Minn.: American Law Institute Pubs., 1971).Google Scholar
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227 For example, former Harvard University history professor Alan Brinkley, now at Columbia University, wrote a review of the 1988 Presidential campaign. Alan Brinkley, “A Savage and Demeaning Ritual,”N.Y. Times Bk. Rev., 14 Oct. 1990, at 1, col. 1, reviewing Sidney Blumenthal, Pledging Allegiance (1990). In the review, Brinkley suggests that Michael Dukakis's “image of public life reflected the value-neutral credo of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, where he taught for several years between his first and second terms as Governor of Massachusetts.”Id. at 28. Since Dukakis was a 1960 graduate of the Harvard Law School, he instead may have reflected the process-based credo of reasoned elaboration. My point is that jurisprudential movements often are implemented after some delay. For example, since the Supreme Court presently consists of three 1960s graduates of the Harvard Law School, the Court eventually may attempt to revive reasoned elaboration.Google Scholar
228 374 U.S. 483 (1954).Google Scholar
229 See Wechsler, , 73 Harv. L. Rev.Google Scholar
230 See White, , 59 Va. L Rev. at 291–94 (cited in note 14). The Hart/Sacks Legal Process teaching materials, although never published in final form, were used by many law schools in teaching courses entitled Legal Process in the 1960s and 1970s. Further, the Hart/Wechsler casebook on federal courts dominated that field for many years.Google Scholar
231 Comm. on Rules of Practice and Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States, ‘A Preliminary Report on the Advisability and Feasibility of Developing Uniform Rules of Evidence for the United States District Courts,’ 30 F.R.D. 73, 76 (1962).Google Scholar
232 Green, Thomas F. Jr., “Preliminary Study of the Advisability and Feasibility of Developing Uniform Rules of Evidence for the Federal Courts,” 30 F.R.D. 79, 99–105, 110–13 (1962). The report mentioned the Model Code of Evidence as “a starting point” for the Committee which wrote the Uniform Rules of Evidence. Id. at 111. At the end of the report, the Special Advisory Committee reprinted the ABA resolution in favor of uniform federal rules of evidence. Notably absent from the ABA resolution was any mention of the Model Code of Evidence. Instead, there was an explicit statement that a drafting committee “adapt the Uniform Rules of Evidence.” Id. at 113.Google Scholar
233 21 Wright & Graham, Federal Practice at § 5006.Google Scholar
234 Professor Cleary graduated from the University of Illinois Law School in 1932 and received his J.S.D. in 1933 from Yale Law School. He taught at the University of Illinois from 1946 to 1967 and at Arizona State University from 1967 to 1977, when he retired. ‘Biography of Edward W. Cleary,’ 1977 Ariz. St. L.J., 245. See also “Tribute to Edward W. Cleary,” 1991 U. III. L. Rev. 250. Cleary died in January 1990.Google Scholar
235 Rules of Evidence, Pub. L. 93–595, 88 Stats. 1296 (1974).Google Scholar
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237 See Evid, Fed R. 403 (giving the trial court the discretion to exclude relevant evidence if “its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice”). See generally Mengler, Thomas M., “The Theory of Discretion in the Federal Rules of Evidence,” 74 Iowa L. Rev. 413 (1989); Waltz, Jon R., “Judicial Discretion in the Admission of Evidence under the Federal Rules of Evidence,” 79 Nw. L. Rev. 1097 (1984–85).Google Scholar
238 Fed R. Evid 102. This rule was in the preliminary draft of the FRE and remained unchanged throughout the drafting process. The drafters chose not to attempt to split the difference, as attempted by Hart & McNaughton in a 1958 article. Hart & McNaughton, “Evidence and Inference” at 45 (cited in note 136). (In a lawsuit “something more is at stake than the truth only of the specific matter in contest. There is at stake also that confidence of the public generally in the impartiality and fairness of public settlement of disputes”).Google Scholar
239 Thus, I think it wrong to assume that the procedural reformers of the 1930s and 1940s were naive in their reliance on the good faith of judges and government. Instead, they seemed well aware of the limitations of trial courts, as indicated by one of Morgan's last essays on evidentiary reform. See Morgan, Edmund M., “Practical Difficulties Impeding Reform in the Law of Evidence,” 14 Vand. L. Rev. 725, 734–35 (1961) (criticizing Professor David Louisell's suggestion that real reform lay in selecting and securing good trial judges as “opposing a proposal for a reform which lies in the sphere of present probability by shifting to a proposal for a more far-reaching change that is beyond the range of adoption in the foreseeable future”).Google Scholar
240 See, e.g., Borden, Luther V., 7 How. (48 U.S.) 1, 41 (1852) (“It is the province of the court to expound the law, not to make it”).Google Scholar
241 Hart & Sacks, The Legal Process (cited in note 205).Google Scholar
242 This short and biased summary is more thoroughly stated in White, 59 Va. L. Rev. at 286–91 (cited in note 14). See also Bobbitt, , Constitutional Fate 42–58 (cited in note 218). One example in the law of evidence is Cleary's essay, “Preliminary Notes on Reading the Rules of Evidence,” 57 Neb. L Rev. 908 (1978), in which he suggests which materials ought to be used in interpreting the FRE.Google Scholar
243 See especially Wechsler, 73 Harv. L Rev. (cited in note 224). See also Bobbitt, , Constitutional Fate 44–47.Google Scholar
244 See Gilmore, Ages of American Law 72–74 (cited in note 221).Google Scholar
245 Keyes, W. Noel, “The Restatement (Second): Its Misleading Quality and a Proposal for Its Amelioration,” 13 Pepperdine L. Rev. 23, 28 (1985).Google Scholar
246 There is a very complex interaction regarding the relationship of the development of the legal profession and legal education and their impact upon the American Law Institute's Restatement projects. My tentative thoughts are that the elite within the bar and legal academia wanted to use the (First) Restatements both to create greater certainty and uniformity in the law of various states and to ensure a form of control over the legal systems of the various states. By the time of the (Second) Restatements, the main purpose was to create opportunities for graduated doctrinal change, like § 402A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, given the assumption of the subjectivity of legal decision making. See Herbert Wechsler, “Restatements and Legal Change: Problems of Policy in the Restatement Work of the American Law Institute,” 13 Saint Louis U.L.J. 185 (1969); compare W. Noel Keyes, 13 Pepperdine L. Rev., with John W. Wade, “The Restatement (Second): A Tribute to Its Increasingly Advantageous Quality, and an Encouragement to Continue the Trend,” 13 Pepperdine L. Rev. 59 (1985). Cf. Hull, 8 Law B Hist. Rev. (cited in note 13) (concluding that the creation of the ALI was a product of “progressive-pragmatists,” whose interest in the reform of law was antithetical to the conservative interests of formalists interested in freezing law). See generally G. Edward White, Tort Law in America: An Intellectual History 139–79 New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
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