Evidence Under the Rules: Text, Cases, and Problems, Tenth Edition

Laird C. Kirkpatrick

Education
B.A., Harvard University
J.D., University of Oregon

Background
Laird C. Kirkpatrick is the Louis Harkey Mayo Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. He is the former Philip H. Knight Dean of the University of Oregon Law School. He previously served as Counsel to the head of the Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice, as a Commissioner ex officio on the United States Sentencing Commission, and as an Assistant United States Attorney.

Professor Kirkpatrick is the coauthor of a widely adopted law school coursebook on evidence, a five volume treatise on the Federal Rules of Evidence, an evidence hornbook, and several other books. Professor Kirkpatrick is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a former delegate to the American Bar Association House of Delegates, and former chair of the Evidence Section of the American Association of Law Schools. Prior to entering law teaching, he served as a trial lawyer in private practice and as director of litigation for a major legal servces program. He has previously taught at the University of Michigan, University of London, University of Adelaide, University of Maryland, Suffolk University, and the University of California, Hastings College of Law. He has received several awards for distinguished teaching.

Christopher B. Mueller

Christopher Mueller is the Henry S. Lindsley Professor of Procedure and Advocacy at the University of Colorado School of Law. Prior to joining the faculty of CU Law School, Christopher Mueller was a professor of law at the Universities of Illinois and Wyoming. His scholarship focuses on evidence law, particularly the rules governing hearsay and impeachment. His interest in hearsay stems from his interest in, as he says, ''the tension between the tendency of lawyers to interpret language grammatically and structurally and the human tendency to speak by indirection, analogy, idiom, and image.'' He notes that ''hearsay doctrine is too often interpreted literally, and too often interpreted so as to overlook the senses in which language has operative effect.''

Evidence Under the Rules is in use in more than 100 law schools today. Professor Mueller and Professor Kirkpatrick have also written a five-volume treatise, Federal Evidence, that is updated annually and cited approximately twice a week by appellate courts across the country. They have also completed Modern Evidence, a one-volume source for judges and lawyers, and the student hornbook entitled Evidence, which sells thousands of copies a year and affects the education in evidence of many students across the country.

Major media outlets and newspapers across the country have called on Professor Mueller's expertise during the coverage of important national trials. For example, in connection with the Oklahoma City bombing trial of Timothy McVeigh, Proessor Mueller appeared several times on The Jim Lehrer Newshour, and was frequently interviewed on National Public Radio. Professor Mueller is currently working on a civil procedure coursebook, and on updating the treatises on federal evidence. In the future, he intends to develop his expertise in complex litigation, and to focus on developments in federal jurisdiction, the reform of federal rules, and developments in privilege law.

Liesa Richter

Liesa L. Richter is the Floyd & Martha Norris Chair in Law and a George Lynn Cross Research Professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where she has taught Evidence and Civil Procedure for more than twenty years. Professor Richter is the Academic Consultant to the Federal Evidence Advisory Committee and is an elected member of the American Law Institute. Before joining the academy, she was a commercial litigation lawyer with the firm of King and Spalding, and she clerked for Judge Frank Mays Hull on the Eleventh Circuit and for Judge Jack T. Camp in the Northern District of Georgia. Her scholarly interests have led to leading articles in areas of privilege, hearsay, and character evidence.