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Michael Risinger

Michael Risinger

John J. Gibbons Professor of Law

Current
Faculty News

Professor Michael Risinger, What Standards of Proof Imply We Want from Jurors, and What We Should Say to Them to Get It  University of Texas Law School.

Professor Michael Risinger, Why I Left Civil Procedure, 21st Century Litigation: Pathologies and Possibilities, UCLA Law Review Symposium in Honor of Stephen Yeazell.

Professor Michael Risinger, Searching for Truth in the Rules of Evidence, at Evidence Reform: Turning a Grostesque Structure Into a Rational Edifice?, University of Georgia.

Professor Michael Risinger, keynote speaker on Expert Evidence and Its Weaknesses at the Annual Conference of the Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan.

Professor Michael Risinger was the opening speaker at an all day program on Cross Examining Forensic Experts at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences Annual Meeting, Atlanta.

National Association of Women Judges Annual Conference, Seton Hall Law, October 14 and 15.

Prof. Lori A. Nessel, panel on Prevention of Human Trafficking.

Prof. Linda Fisher and Prof. Shavar D. Jeffries, panel on Foreclosure Crisis, Access to Education, Prisoner Reentry.

Prof. Kevin B. Kelly and Prof. Jessica Miles, panel on Domestic Violence Issues.

Prof. Lori A. Nessel and Prof. Margaret K. Lewis, panel on Immigration Considerations in Your Courtroom.

Prof. Michael Risinger, panel on Daubert Issues.

Professor Michael Risinger, Control of Forensic Science by Courts in America at the Jill Dando Institute for Forensic Science Research in London.

Professor Michael Risinger, at the Royal Statistical Society, London, presenting at Young Statisticians Section, What Statisticians Can Do for Forensic Science and also commenting on Cedric Neumann’s Quantifying the Weight of Evidence for a Forensic Fingerprint Comparison: A New Paradigm during General Meeting.

Professor Michael Risinger, The Nature of Expertise and Judicial Approaches to Its Control, Scottish Universities Insight Institute Programme on the Scots Law of Evidence, Glasgow.

Professor Michael Risinger Context Bias, before the American Society of Forensic Odontologists at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences annual meeting, Chicago, Feb. 22nd.

Professor Michael Risinger, speaker at a symposium on Actual Innocence procedures.  The title of his presentation is The Trawl Search Problem in Common Eyewitness Identification Procedures.

Professor Michael Risinger addresses the New York Bar Association Program on Litigating Forensic Evidence in the New York Courts, in New York City.

Professor Michael Risinger, panelist, Cutting Edge Issues and moderated Ethics and Forensics at the ABA Section on Criminal Justice's Conference on Forensic Science at Fordham.

Professor Michael Risinger, The NSA/NRC Report on Forensic Science: A Glass Nine Tenths Full (This Is About the Other Tenth), 50 Jurimetrics 21 (2009)

Professor Michael Risinger, Error Rates, Diagnosticity, and Research to a joint session of the AAFS Sections on Jurisprudence and Engineering Services in Seattle.

Professor Michael Risinger, Observer Bias and Forensic Science: The Empirical Record at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences Annual Meeting in Seattle.

Professor Michael Risinger, The NAS Report on Forensic Science: Dead on Arrival at Forensic Science: A Blueprint for the Future at UCLA.

News Archives

Michael Risinger

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Michael Risinger

John J. Gibbons Professor of Law

Professor Risinger holds a B.A., magna cum laude, from Yale University, and a J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School. He clerked for the Honorable Clarence C. Newcomer of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. He is a past chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Civil Procedure, the immediate past chair of the AALS Section on Evidence, and a life member of the American Law Institute. He was also a member of the New Jersey Supreme Court Committee on Evidence for 25 years, which was responsible for the current version of the New Jersey Rules of Evidence. Professor Risinger came to Seton Hall Law School in 1973. He served as a visiting senior fellow on the law faculty of the National University of Singapore from 1985-1986. Professor Risinger has published in the areas of evidence and civil procedure. He is the co-author of Trial Evidence, A Continuing Legal Education Casebook and the author of two chapters in Faigman, Kaye, Saks and Sanders, Modern Scientific Evidence (“Handwriting Identification” and “A Proposed Taxonomy of Expertise”).  Professor Risinger was selected as one of Seton Hall’s two inaugural Dean’s Research Fellows (2002-2004) and was named the John J. Gibbons Professor of Law in May 2008.  His scholarship has recently concentrated on wrongful convictions as well as expert evidence issues.

PUBLICATIONS

LAW REVIEW ARTICLES


"Innocents Convicted: An Empirically Justified Factual Wrongful Conviction Rate", 97 J. Crim. Law & Criminology 761 (2007)

"The Irrelevance, and Central Relevance, of the Boundary Between Science and Non-Science in the Evaluation of Expert Witness Reliability", 52 Villanova L. Rev. 679 (2007)

Unsafe Verdicts: The Need for Reformed Standards for the Trial and Review of Factual Innocence Claims, 41 Houston L. Rev. 1281  (2004)

Baserates, The Presumption of Guilt, Admissibility Rulings, and Erroneous Convictions, 2003 Mich. St. L. Rev. 1051 (2003) (with Saks)

Kumho Tire and Expert Reliability: How the Question You Ask Gives the Answer You Get, 34 Seton Hall L. Rev. (2003) (with Denbeaux)

Rationality, Research and Leviathan: Law Enforcement-Sponsored Research and the Criminal Process, 2003 Mich. St. L. Rev. 1023 (2003) (with Saks)

The Daubert/Kumho Implications of Observer Effects in Forensic Science: Hidden Problems of Expectation and Suggestion, 90 Cal. L. Rev. 1 (2002) (with Saks, Thompson & Rosenthal)

Three Card Monte, Monty Hall, Modus Operandi and "Offender Profiling": Some Lessons from Modern Cognitive Science for the Law of Evidence, 24 Cardozo L. Rev. 193 (2002) (with Loop)

Defining the "Task at Hand": Non-Science Forensic Science after Kumho Tire v. Carmichael, 37 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 767 (2000)

Navigating Expert Reliability: Are Criminal Standards of Certainty Being Left on the Dock, 64 Albany L. Rev. 99 (2000)

Preliminary Thoughts on a Functional Taxonomy of Expertise for the Post Kumho World, 31 Seton Hall L. Rev. 508 (2000)

Brave New "Post-Daubert World" - A Reply to Professor Moensses, 29 Seton Hall L. Rev. 405 (1998)

John Henry Wigmore, Johnny Lynn Old Chief, and "Legitimate Moral Force": Keeping the Courtroom Safe for Heartstrings and Gore, 49 Hastings L.J. 403 (1998)

Science and Nonscience in the Courtroom: Daubert Meets Handwriting Identification Expertise, 82 Iowa L. Rev. 21 (1997) (with Saks)

Exorcism of Ignorance as a Proxy for Rational Knowledge: The Lessons of Handwriting Identification "Expertise", 137 U. Pa. L. Rev. 731 (1989) (with Denbeaux and Saks)

Another Step in the Counter-Revolution: A Summary Judgment on the Supreme Court's New Approach to Summary Judgment, 54 Brooklyn L. Rev. 35 (1988)

Direct Damages: The Lost Key to Constitutional Just Compensation When Business Premises Are Condemed, 15 Seton Hall L. Rev. 483 (1985)

"Substance" & "Procedure" Revisited, (with Some Afterthoughts on the Constitutional Problems of "Irrebuttable Presumptions"), 30 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 189 (1983)

Questioning Questions: Problems of Form in the Interrogation of Witnesses, 33 Arkansas L. Rev. 439 (1980) (with Denbeaux)

Honesty in Pleading and Its Enforcement: Some "Striking Problems with FRCP II, 61 Minn. L. Rev. 1 (1976)

Presumptions, Assumptions, and Due Process in Criminal Cases: A Theoretical Overview, 79 Yale L. J. 165 (1969) (with Ashford)

OTHER JOURNAL ARTICLES


The NSA/NRC Report on Forensic Science: A Glass Nine Tenths Full (This Is About the Other Tenth), 50 Jurimetrics 21 (2009)

OTHER PUBLICATIONS


"Boxes in Boxes: Julian Barnes, Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and the Edalji Case", 4 International Commentary on Evidence, Iss. 2, Article 3 (2006)

Context Effects in Forensic Science:  A Review and Application of the Science of Science to Crime Laboratory Practice in the United States, 43 Science and Justice (the Journal of the British Forensic Science Society) 77 (2003) (with Saks)

A House with No Foundation:  Litigation Directed Research in the Criminal Justice System, 20 Issues in Science and Technology (the Magazine of the National Academy of Science) 35 (Fall 2003) (with Saks)