Libertarian Legal Morality Tales

Will: Yeah. Clerks [unintelligible .
Will: Yeah. Because it's taking away from the courts the ability to decide what the [unintelligible .
Will: He has many greater intellectual pedigrees than the fact that he has this blog. It's just the blog is a throwback and remains an incredibly useful, early aught Internet style, deep dive on the [unintelligible and Confrontation Clause. He filed an amicus brief, and in his amicus brief, he was on Smith's side. He did offer the court a path to distinguish Williams and said, “This case is very different from Williams because in this case, the value of the statements at issue, depend critically on the credibility of their maker. We need to know whether Rast is lying or not when she tested the drugs or did a good job testing them.
Will: Yeah, I think the court now has to have Williams come out the other way, I think. I don't think they've given us any reason to think they come out differently. Maybe the testimonial will go [unintelligible again, I think both these statements would be testimonial, but it's a little hard to tell. It's also the case-- so, if you imagine a spectrum of how much is the new expert really just there to launder the old expert's opinion? I think this one is pretty far on the bad end of the spectrum. This expert basically [chuckles] is sitting there on the stand reading Rast's report as if it were his, and that seems pretty bad. But I think the principle applies, even if he's not doing that, even if he's just giving his own opinion, and then saying that the reason for his own opinion is because he's relying on these hearsay statements.
Will: Right, but isn't that a mistake, like I said, [unintelligible bad.