The Goodson Blogson

In 1953, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson famously said of his place of work: "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final." Brown v. Allen , 344 U.S. 443 (1953) (Jackson, J., concurring). This week, ProPublica released the results of a study which examined Supreme Court opinions for factual errors . While the sampling of eighty-four cases from 2011-2015 is too small to draw sweeping statistical conclusions, the researchers did uncover factual errors, both large and small, in seven of the twenty-four sampled SCOTUS cases which contained "legislative facts." (The report also highlights five earlier opinions containing additional factual mistakes.) ProPublica notes that the sources of the mistakes varied: some apparently originated with a justice's extrajudicial research, while other errors had been repeated from faulty filings and amicus briefs. The impact of the errors also varied – some were minor er...

Students of evidence already know that hypnotism has a long history in our legal system (for example, a 1902 Yale Law Journal article explored " Legal Aspects of Hypnotism "). Hypnotically-refreshed testimony, highly controversial on the subject of its admissibility and reliability, has received the majority of scholarly attention over the years. But another, even older, twist on hypnotism and the law resurfaced this week – liability for harm to a hypnotist's subject . In an unusual case from Florida, a school board approved a $600,000 settlement agreement with the families of three high school students who died in 2011 after they were hypnotized by the school's former principal. During an investigation after the tragic suicide of the first student, the school discovered that then-Principal George Kenney had hypnotized as many as 75 students and staff members in the school, and also taught students self-hypnosis techniques as a method to improve concentration. (A...