Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
In 2026, Cambridge University Press will publish Critical Evidence, edited by Bennett Capers, Jasmine Harris, and Julia Simon-Kerr. This panel features six of its contributing authors, all scholars of evidence and race.
Critical Evidence shows that evidence law is fundamentally about power, setting the boundaries for whose voices will be heard and what types of knowledge will be cognizable in court. Building on critical race theory and other critical legal theories, Critical Evidence exposes the ways that the system of proof systematically privileges insiders while silencing or discrediting marginalized groups, in particular people of color, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people and those at the intersections of these marginalized identities. While this new scholarship is rich and varied, it is unified by its rejection of the view that evidence rules are neutral, trans-substantive, and non-partisan. Critical evidence theorists are also unified in exploring the ways the evidence system—the rules, the legal actors deploying them, and the gatekeepers interpreting them—is structured to perpetuate advantages for some and disadvantages for others; in short, subordination. This lens shows logic, knowledge, and determinations of truth cannot exist in a vacuum. The social context in which evidence questions are asked and answered will inform where we start and where logic takes us.
Each contributing author applies a critical lens to evidence law in its entirety or to a single evidentiary concept or rule, revealing evidentiary law’s inherent inequality or the asymmetry in how courts apply the rules, and suggesting reforms or transformation.
•Bennett Capers, Professor of Law, Fordham Law School, Critical Race Theory, Afrofuturism, and Reimagining the Rules of Evidence
•Montré Denise Carodine, Professor of Law, The University of Alabama School of Law, Race is Evidence/Evidence is Race: Flipping the Script on the “Racial Lens”
•Daniel Harawa, Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, Peña-Rodriguez v. Colorado, Jury Secrecy, and the Performance of Racial Justice
•Alexis Hoag-Fordjour, David Dinkins ‘56 Associate Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School, Presumed Credible: Police Officer Testimony
•Ngozi Okidegbe, Associate Professor of Law and Assistant Professor of Computing & Data Sciences, Boston University School of Law, Democratic Evidence
•Anna Roberts, Dean’s Research Scholar and Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School, Teaching Impeachment
In 2026, Cambridge University Press will publish Critical Evidence, edited by Bennett Capers, Jasmine Harris, and Julia Simon-Kerr. This panel features six of its contributing authors, all scholars of evidence and race.
Critical Evidence shows that evidence law is fundamentally about power, setting the boundaries for whose voices will be heard and what types of knowledge will be cognizable in court. Building on critical race theory and other critical legal theories, Critical Evidence exposes the ways that the system of proof systematically privileges insiders while silencing or discrediting marginalized groups, in particular people of color, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people and those at the intersections of these marginalized identities. While this new scholarship is rich and varied, it is unified by its rejection of the view that evidence rules are neutral, trans-substantive, and non-partisan. Critical evidence theorists are also unified in exploring the ways the evidence system—the rules, the legal actors deploying them, and the gatekeepers interpreting them—is structured to perpetuate advantages for some and disadvantages for others; in short, subordination. This lens shows logic, knowledge, and determinations of truth cannot exist in a vacuum. The social context in which evidence questions are asked and answered will inform where we start and where logic takes us.
Each contributing author applies a critical lens to evidence law in its entirety or to a single evidentiary concept or rule, revealing evidentiary law’s inherent inequality or the asymmetry in how courts apply the rules, and suggesting reforms or transformation.
•Bennett Capers, Professor of Law, Fordham Law School, Critical Race Theory, Afrofuturism, and Reimagining the Rules of Evidence
•Montré Denise Carodine, Professor of Law, The University of Alabama School of Law, Race is Evidence/Evidence is Race: Flipping the Script on the “Racial Lens”
•Daniel Harawa, Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, Peña-Rodriguez v. Colorado, Jury Secrecy, and the Performance of Racial Justice
•Alexis Hoag-Fordjour, David Dinkins ‘56 Associate Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School, Presumed Credible: Police Officer Testimony
•Ngozi Okidegbe, Associate Professor of Law and Assistant Professor of Computing & Data Sciences, Boston University School of Law, Democratic Evidence
•Anna Roberts, Dean’s Research Scholar and Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School, Teaching Impeachment
