Jan17

From CyberOne Wiki

this course expresses my understanding of how individuals and institutions make and convey meaning. my subject is the law of evidence with focus on how and why our process makes its version of truth. i offer you my understanding.

i am joined in the enterprise of teaching it by my teaching assistants, andrew woods and kevin wallen. i thank my daughter rebecca for her inspiration and guidance in all dimensions of this enterprise. i thank the berkman center and the audio-visual department of harvard law school for the engine of intelligent expression they provide.

vidence is object in context from which another draws meaning. that's you.

-1

you are -1
you know yourself only by inference
you are the only point in your universe you cannot see
you are the point at the pole of the reimann sphere
you feel and think as roots of who you are

i am here to teach you how to make and understand evidence.

e

i am here to think about with you how we make and understand meaning from evidence.

i&i

our field of play is the American Jury Trial and the explosively expanding net

this is a course about process as substance. We consider relationships among

• the game we choose to play
• the rules of the game we choose to play
• how we play to win

We consider two games, litigation and poker. by litigation i mean trial by jury. by poker i mean no limit tournament texas hold'em.

you are the evidence of yourself fed back to you in tempo of time
once around euler's circle ticking real time
and is processed to meaning recursively

The People of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in forming a government of laws to better ensure their common protection and well- being, sought to preserve their liberty by reserving to the people the irrevocable and unreviewable authority – in the form of the jury – to pass judgment upon the question of whether their fellow citizen has committed a criminal act meriting punishment. This authority vests within the jury in a criminal trial the right to return a general verdict of ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’ in the case before them. This verdict encompasses a finding of facts as instructed above, but also a determination of criminal guilt based on those facts.

If you believe, to a moral certainty, that the defendant’s proven conduct constituted a criminal act that deserves public condemnation and punishment, then you should enter a verdict of guilty. If, on the other hand, you believe that the defendant’s conduct was not criminal – that it did not constitute a breach of the peace, threaten the public’s welfare or public order, or prejudice any of the rights of others – and that it does not therefore merit public condemnation and punishment, then you may enter a verdict of not guilty.

The People of the Commonwealth created a government of checks and balances in which they vested the legislature with the power to create laws, the executive with the power to enforce them, and the courts with the power to interpret and apply them. The right of the People, entrusted to a jury of free citizens, to stand between the government’s law and an individual accused of its violation stands as the final check on the government’s power to revoke the liberty of its citizens by creating, enforcing, and applying a law which unjustly encroaches upon the right of the People to their lib