Today was a big day for Family Law Evidence (“FLE”), but it didn’t take a ton of time, honestly. I got the domain purchased and pulled together a rudimentary WordPress theme.
Then I posted the first twelve sections of the California Evidence Code, §§ 1-12 from Division 1 (Preliminary Provisions and Construction), and linked them up to the index page, California Evidence Code.
All in all, it really only took me a couple of hours on a slightly chilly day in Hermosa Beach, California. Hopefully this turns out the be the very large project I hope it becomes.
It was more about the commitment and the first steps that took a lot of energy from me.
The first commentary is to § 2, which guides family law counsel to keep in mind that the family law court should not strictly construe the Evidence Code.
Instead, the family law court should construe the rules to promote the purposes of the Evidence Code itself and to promote justice for the parties before it, which in my experience the judges generally do. Interestingly, the “purposes” of the Evidence Code aren’t expressly defined in the 1965 enactment of the statutes.
I do appreciate how crisply the Evidence Code is written, and that crispness shows up in § 2, where it says, “[t]he rule of the common law, that statutes in derogation thereof are to be strictly construed, has no application to this code.” The drafters could have written that so many different ways, but the way they did it seems to have an exclamation point on the end of it.
I was also very pleased to notice that the Advisory Committee to the Federal Rules of Evidence cited California’s § 2 as an example of a state with a “similar purpose” to Federal Rule of Evidence 102. Only one other state, New Jersey, was mentioned. The Federal rules were amended ten years after California enacted its rules.
We’re just getting started! Send me an email if you want updates as we go: michael@michaelricelaw.com.
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