Book contents
- Critical Evidence
- Critical Evidence
- Copyright page
- Contents
- About the Editors
- Contributors
- Foreword: An Outsider’s Tribute
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part IIntroduction to the Field and Its Actors
- Part IIThe Rules
- Section 1Relevance and Prejudice
- Relevance, Reconsidered
- The Relevance and Prejudice of Poverty Evidence
- Toward a Critical Race Theory of Evidence
- Section 2Character Evidence
- Character (Evidence) Assassination
- Disability as a Character Chameleon
- Different Spanks for Different Ranks
- Evidence Without Rules
- Judging Demeanor
- Section 3Credibility
- Law’s Credibility Problem
- Teaching Impeachment
- Section 4Sex Trials
- Real Women, Real Rape
- Unchaste and Incredible
- Feminist Take(s) on Other (Sexual) Bad Acts
- Section 5Hearsay and Confrontation
- The Neglected Origins of the Hearsay Rule in American Slavery
- Examining the American Hearsay Prohibition’s Roots in Slavery
- Hearsay and Confrontation from a Feminist Gaze
- Facially Neutral, Quietly Skewed
- Section 6Experts
- Who Says You’re Disabled? The Role of Medical Evidence in the ADA Definition of Disability
- Beyond the Binary
- Presumed Expertise
- Party-Blind Review
- Unequal Burdens of Proof
- Section 7Privileges
- Underprivileged
- Parent-Child Privilege as Resistance
- Part IIIExpanding Evidence
- Suggested Readings
Unchaste and Incredible
The Use of Gendered Conceptions of Honor in Impeachment
from Part II - The Rules
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2026
Book contents
- Critical Evidence
- Critical Evidence
- Copyright page
- Contents
- About the Editors
- Contributors
- Foreword: An Outsider’s Tribute
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part IIntroduction to the Field and Its Actors
- Part IIThe Rules
- Section 1Relevance and Prejudice
- Relevance, Reconsidered
- The Relevance and Prejudice of Poverty Evidence
- Toward a Critical Race Theory of Evidence
- Section 2Character Evidence
- Character (Evidence) Assassination
- Disability as a Character Chameleon
- Different Spanks for Different Ranks
- Evidence Without Rules
- Judging Demeanor
- Section 3Credibility
- Law’s Credibility Problem
- Teaching Impeachment
- Section 4Sex Trials
- Real Women, Real Rape
- Unchaste and Incredible
- Feminist Take(s) on Other (Sexual) Bad Acts
- Section 5Hearsay and Confrontation
- The Neglected Origins of the Hearsay Rule in American Slavery
- Examining the American Hearsay Prohibition’s Roots in Slavery
- Hearsay and Confrontation from a Feminist Gaze
- Facially Neutral, Quietly Skewed
- Section 6Experts
- Who Says You’re Disabled? The Role of Medical Evidence in the ADA Definition of Disability
- Beyond the Binary
- Presumed Expertise
- Party-Blind Review
- Unequal Burdens of Proof
- Section 7Privileges
- Underprivileged
- Parent-Child Privilege as Resistance
- Part IIIExpanding Evidence
- Suggested Readings
Summary
Our legal system hinges on evaluations of credibility. Whom do we expect to tell the truth? When will they tell it? And how do we know they are telling it? These questions must arise, consciously or not, in the mind of any judge or juror who is asked to evaluate witness testimony. The need to judge credibility has been discussed by legal scholars and practitioners and addressed in evidentiary rules dealing with the use of character evidence at trial to impeach witnesses. Missing from this dialogue, however, has been an understanding that the answers to these basic questions about truthfulness have differed on gender lines.
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- Critical Evidence , pp. 218 - 220Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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