lawl

“ There’s a little stage. Children are gathered around. Up pops a little mouse puppet. Hello! Baby Mouse. He’s lost. He’s trying to find his way home through the woods. And he misses his mom. He’s getting hungry. Then suddenly, from behind a bush, out pops an alligator! And eats him. ‘Baby Mouse is not alive anymore,’ the narrator concludes. ”

“ Finally, there can be no doubt that these acts, if the allegations of the letter were false, would be viewed at common law as a mortal sin, and that having permitted the letter to remain in conduit, Mrs. Jensen’s last conscious moments on this earth were spent with knowledge that the letter was still in the conduit and that she would, by failing to retrieve it, ratify this mortal sin; that she would have known that she would therefore have no chance of absolution, and that on the day of judgment, she would be condemned to eternal torment and damnation. ”

“ When a question has reached the point of a contested trial, however, its whole context is changed. Victory, and not accommodation, is the objective of the parties. The adversary atmosphere and the delays of litigation naturally repel evidence, especially testimony and things under the control of disinterested persons, so that the litigants have available for use only the partisan and coerced residue after people with ingenuity have made themselves anonymous. That residue is culled by the parties with a view not so much to establishing the whole truth as to winning the case. And the evidence which survives this attrition (and the exclusionary rules of evidence described below) is communicated to the trier of fact in an emotion-charged setting. ”