AALS Discussion Group Program

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This discussion group focuses critical attention on prior conviction impeachment. U.S. evidence law often permits witnesses’ prior convictions to be introduced to impeach their credibility. Such impeachment has long been critiqued on many grounds relevant to this year’s theme. Using convictions to bring about other convictions implicates freedom. Perpetuating biases of the criminal legal process along lines of race, in particular, implicates equality. And this practice’s detachment from truth-seeking and tendency to chill defendants’ testimony implicates the common good. The roundtable brings together scholars, practitioners and judges to think systematically about how to bring about long-awaited change in this area.