Browsing Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Works by Author "Cheng, Edward K."

Now showing items 1-20 of 30

    • Being Pragmatic About Forensic Linguistics 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Journal of Law and Policy, 2013)
      This article aims to provide some legal context to the Authorship Attribution Workshop (“conference”). In particular, I want to offer some pragmatic observations on what courts will likely demand of forensic linguistics ...
    • Beyond the Witness 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Texas Law Review, 2019)
      The focal point of the modern trial is the witness. Witnesses are the source of observations, lay and expert opinions, authentication, as well as the conduit through which documentary, physical, and scientific evidence is ...
    • Changing Scientific Evidence 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Minnesota Law Review, 2003)
      A number of high-profile toxic tort cases, such as silicone breast implants, have followed a familiar and disturbing path: Early studies suggest a link between a suspected substance and a particular illness. Based on these ...
    • Completing the Quantum of Evidence 
      Cheng, Edward K.; Bowerman, Brooke (Minnesota Law Review Headnotes, 2021)
      In Evidentiary Irony and the Incomplete Rule of Completeness, Professors Daniel Capra and Liesa Richter comprehensively catalog the many shortcomings in current Federal Rule of Evidence 106 and craft a compelling reform ...
    • Conference on Best Practices for Managing Daubert Questions 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Fordham Law Review, 2020)
      First, we like you, reject the purported divide between a legal academy and law practice observed and bemoaned by prominent American jurists like Judges Harry Edwards and Richard Posner. Elite academics like those in this ...
    • Constitutional Risks to Equal Protection in the Criminal Justice System 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Harvard Law Review, 2001)
      This Note has examined the consequences of a shift in the equal protection context - a move from a traditional particularized harm perspective to a constitutional risk perspective focused on systemic harms. It has also ...
    • Distributing Attorney Fees in Multidistrict Litigation 
      Edelman, Paul H.; Cheng, Edward K.; Fitzpatrick, Brian T. (Journal of Legal Analysis, 2021)
      As consolidated multidistrict litigation has come to dominate the federal civil docket, the problem of how to divide attorney fees among participating firms has become the source of frequent and protracted litigation. For ...
    • Does Frye or Daubert Matter? A Study of Scientific Admissibility Standards 
      Cheng, Edward K.; Yoon, Albert (Virginia Law Review, 2005)
      Nearly every treatment of scientific evidence begins with a faithful comparison between the Frye and Daubert standards. Since 1993, jurists and legal scholars have spiritedly debated which standard is preferable and whether ...
    • Erie and the Rules of Evidence 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Vanderbilt Law Review, 2012)
      Jay Tidmarsh offers an intriguing new test for drawing the allimportant line between procedure and substance for purposes of Erie. The Tidmarsh test is attractively simple, yet seemingly reaches the right result in separating ...
    • Fighting Legal Innumeracy 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Green Bag 2d, 2014)
      An old joke quips that lawyers go to law school precisely because they never liked math or were never good at math – and that therefore medical school (or these days, Wall Street) was not an option. While this tired joke ...
    • Forensics, , Chicken Soup, and Meteorites: A Tribute to Michael Risinger 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Seton Hall Law Review, 2018)
      Michael Risinger's scholarship has had a profound impact on our field. And while his work has run the gamut in evidence law, I think it is clear that Michael's true love has always been expert evidence, and more specifically, ...
    • Independent Judicial Research 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Duke Law Journal, 2007)
      The Supreme Court's Daubert trilogy places judges in the unenviable position of assessing the reliability of often unfamiliar and complex scientific expert testimony. Over the past decade, scholars have therefore explored ...
    • Is High-Altitude Mountaineering Russian Roulette? 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 2013-02-22)
      In their respective memoirs, mountaineers David Roberts and Ed Viesturs express a fundamental disagreement over the risks associated with climbing high-altitude (8000m) peaks. (Viesturs and Roberts, 2006, Roberts, 2005). ...
    • Law, Statistics, and the Reference Class Problem 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Columbia Law Review, 2009)
      Statistical data are powerful, if not crucial, pieces of evidence in the courtroom. Whether one is trying to demonstrate the rarity of a DNA profile, estimate the value of damaged property, or determine the likelihood that ...
    • Mitochondrial DNA: Emerging Legal Issues 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Journal of Law and Policy, 2005)
      This article will briefly survey some of the current and emerging legal issues surrounding mtDNA evidence. Parts I and II discuss basic evidentiary questions, including mtDNA's reliability and admissibility under Daubert7 ...
    • The Myth of the Generalist Judge 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Stanford Law Review, 2008-12)
      Conventional judicial wisdom assumes and indeed celebrates the ideal of the generalist judge, but do judges really believe in it? This Article empirically tests this question by examining opinion assignments in the federal ...
    • A Normalized Scoring Model for Law School Competitions 
      Cheng, Edward K.; Farmer, Scott J. (Green Bag 2D, 2013)
      Although the focus in this Article is moot court scoring, one can envision many other instances of law school assessment in which such a normalization problem arises. Law review competitions also involve different sets of ...
    • Opinion Specialization 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Judicature, 2008)
      In accord with traditions celebrating the generalist judge, the federal judiciary has consistently resisted proposals for specialized courts. Outward support for specialization, if it exists at all, is confined to narrow ...
    • The Perils of Evidentiary Manipulation 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Virginia Law Review, 9/24/2007)
      The use of evidentiary rules to achieve substantive goals strikes me as a Faustian bargain, and, given Bierschbach and Stein's acknowledgedly tentative position, I hope to dissuade them of the virtues of the practice. My ...
    • A Practical Solution to the Reference Class Problem 
      Cheng, Edward K. (Columbia Law Review, 2009)
      The "reference class problem" is a serious challenge to the use of statistical evidence that arguably arises every day in wide variety of cases, including toxic torts, property valuation, and even drug smuggling. At its ...