Kang Haggerty News
In the August 7, 2025 edition of The Legal Intelligencer, Edward Kang writes, “Bad Character, Good Evidence: Reclaiming Character Evidence for Strategic Use in Civil Litigation.”
Character evidence has a paradoxical position in the law of evidence: deeply relevant in many cases, yet presumptively inadmissible. Under Federal Rule of Evidence 404 and its state counterparts, parties are generally barred from introducing evidence of a person’s character or character trait to argue that they acted in keeping with that character on a particular occasion. This is the so-called “propensity rule,” a prohibition on suggesting that someone did something simply because they are the sort of person who would. Rule 404(a)(1) codifies this general exclusion, and Rule 403’s balancing test, typically used to weigh probative value against prejudicial effect, is preempted in these cases by the categorical nature of the prohibition in Rule 404. There are exceptions, however. Continue reading ›
Beyond the substantive legal matters at issue, one procedural aspect of the trial has also generated significant attention; namely, that the entire proceeding was livestreamed for the public. We discuss below the pros and cons of such coverage, the history of recording devices in courtrooms, as well as provide recommendations for balancing the countervailing concerns at issue.