For your leisure-time reading: Prof. Alex Nunn (Texas A&M) argues that judges should exercise greater authority to sua sponte enforce the rules of evidence, even absent party objections. Adversarialism (in which parties control evidentiary issues, absent concerns for plain error) fails to produce the accuracy-of-verdicts that the rules of evidence seek. Judges thus need to take a more proactive hand in ensuring the evidence rules are maximally enforced, with the goal of greater accuracy.
