{"id":86,"date":"2009-11-20T07:49:45","date_gmt":"2009-11-20T12:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/2009\/11\/20\/voxpop-poses-a-prisoners-dilemma-sort-of\/"},"modified":"2009-11-20T07:49:45","modified_gmt":"2009-11-20T12:49:45","slug":"voxpop-poses-a-prisoners-dilemma-sort-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/2009\/11\/20\/voxpop-poses-a-prisoners-dilemma-sort-of\/","title":{"rendered":"VoxPop poses a Prisoner’s Dilemma (sort of)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"monogamy-as-prisoners-dilemma-1.gif\"<\/a>We pride ourselves on the murkiness of our authorial invitation process at VoxPop.\u00a0 How are authors selected, exactly?\u00a0 Nobody knows, not even the guy who does the selecting.\u00a0 We’d like to lift the veil briefly, by asking for volunteers to help us with a particular area we’re interested in.<\/p>\n

We’d like to run a point-counterpoint style dual entry on the subject of authenticity in legal documents.\u00a0 Yes, we’ve treated the issue before<\/a>.\u00a0 But just today we were fishing around in obscure corners of the LII’s WEX legal dictionary<\/a>, and we found this definition of the Ancient Document Rule:<\/p>\n

Under the Federal Rules of Evidence<\/a>, a permissible method to authenticate a document. Under the rule, if if a document is (1) more than 20 years old; (2) is regular on its face with no signs of obvious alterations; and (3) found in a place of natural custody, or in a place where it would be expected to be found, then the document is found to be prima facie authenticated and therefore admissible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The specific part of FRE involved — Rule 901 —\u00a0 is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why would or wouldn’t we apply this thinking to large existing document repositories — such as the backfile of federal documents at GPO?\u00a0 Is 20 years a reasonable limit?\u00a0 Should it be 5, or 7?\u00a0 What does “where found” mean?\u00a0 We’d like to see two authors — one pro, one con — address these questions in side-by-side posts to VoxPop.<\/p>\n

Where does the Prisoner’s Dilemma<\/a> come in?\u00a0 Well… if we get no volunteers, we won’t run this.\u00a0 If we get volunteers on only one side of the issue, we’ll run a one-sided piece.\u00a0 So, it’s up to you to decide whether both sides will be heard or not.\u00a0 The window for volunteering will close on Tuesday; send your requests to the murky selector at { tom –\u00a0 dot –\u00a0 bruce – att – cornell – dot – edu }.<\/p>\n

We’d also be happy to hear from others who want to write for VoxPop — the new year is fast approaching, and we need fresh voices.\u00a0 Speak up!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We pride ourselves on the murkiness of our authorial invitation process at VoxPop.\u00a0 How are authors selected, exactly?\u00a0 Nobody knows, not even the guy who does the selecting.\u00a0 We’d like to lift the veil briefly, by asking for volunteers to help us with a particular area we’re interested in. We’d like to run a point-counterpoint […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}