This course will provide students with a theoretical and practical understanding of evidence law. After discussing evidence law’s place in the legal system, the course will move on to questions about competence and compellability. This will be followed by a consideration of what makes evidence “relevant” – the threshold requirement for admissibility. The rules governing credibility will be considered, as will the most common exclusionary rules, and the exceptions to them. This will include hearsay evidence (and its most common exceptions, including the principled exception), opinion evidence (and its exceptions, including expert evidence), and character evidence (and its exceptions, including the “similar fact” rule). By the end of the course, students should: • Understand the goals of Evidence Law • Understand the sources of Evidence Law and their interrelationships • Be able to identify and analyze evidentiary problems in fact scenarios and resolve them with reference to prevailing evidentiary rules (common law, statutory and Charter). • Understand the procedural requirements for litigating different evidentiary issues. • Understand, on a practical level, how evidentiary issues are litigated.
Method of Evaluation: Participation (10%), Final Exam (90%), Optional fail-safe paper (50%).