Massachusetts Guide to Evidence: 2011 Edition

Abstract

In June 2006, the Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court, at the request of the Massachusetts Bar Association, the Boston Bar Association, and the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys, created the Supreme Judicial Court Advisory Committee on Massachusetts Evidence Law to prepare a Guide to the Massachusetts law of evidence. The Justices charged the Committee with the mandate “to assemble the current law in one easily usable document, along the lines of the Federal Rules of Evidence, rather than to prepare a Restatement or to propose changes in the existing law of evidence.” As Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall stated in her March 2006 address to the Massachusetts Bar Association, “[t]he Advisory Committee will compile a Guide to Massachusetts evidence law as it currently exists, replete with case law and reporters’ notes. The Guide will make our rules of evidence more accessible to bench, bar, and the public. It will improve the understanding, teaching, and presentation of Massachusetts evidence. It will advance the delivery of justice.”