Spring 2025

5357 Evidence - THOMPSON- 14160

Professor(s): Sandra Thompson (FACULTY)

Credits: 3

Course Areas: Procedure and Practice

Time: 9:00a-10:30a MW Location: 220

Course Outline: This course aims to provide you with a working knowledge of the Federal Rules of Evidence as well as the Texas Rules of Evidence. Texas, like most states, has adopted a set of evidence rules based on the federal rules, so we will only refer to the Texas rules only when they significantly differ from the federal rules.

The rules of evidence govern the introduction of all types of evidence (e.g., testimonial, tangible, documentary, photographic, demonstrative, or scientific). In order to fully comprehend the rules as applied during a trial it is essential to study them in the context of litigation. We will therefore study the application of the rules through a series of problems interspersed throughout the course. These problems call on you to play the role of an attorney who is handling an evidentiary issue in court. You may be required to lay the foundation for admission of evidence or to object to an opponent’s offer to admit evidence.

Course Syllabus: Syllabus

Course Notes: (Face-to-Face) The UH registration system instruction mode for this course is listed in parenthesis. For this instruction mode, instructors and students are expected to normally be physically present in the classroom. If the course has a final examination, it will be in a classroom requiring your physical presence. Other assessment, such as a mid-term exam, may also be in a classroom. Whether this instructor will offer “remote presence” (starting a zoom meeting from the podium computer to enable student remote access on an occasional basis) for part or all of the semester is not known, but students should not rely on an expectation that remote presence will be available.

Quota=80.

Prerequisites:

First Day Assignments:

Final Exam Schedule: 4/30/2025 9-12pm

This course will have:
Exam:
Paper:

Satisfies Senior Upper Level Writing Requirement: No

Experiential Course Type: No

Bar Course: Critical (MBE & MEE)

DistanceEd ABA: No

Pass-Fail Student Election: Unavailable (Instructor Preference)

Course Materials

Book(s) Required

Course Materials: Peter Nicolas, Evidence: A Problem-Based and Comparative Approach (4th Ed.) (Carolina Academic Press 2018) - ISBN: 9781531004033

NOTE: The 5th edition of this book releases December 2024. We are using 4th edition for this spring 2025 course.