CHAIR SCHILTZ: As those of you who have been in the rules work for a while know, rules work is cyclical. During the time I’ve been Chair of the Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, we’ve had two packages of amendments that have gone through. The first package will take effect on December 1, 2024, and that’s the package that is led by the amendment to Rule 702 on expert testimony. And then we have another package that was just approved by the Judicial Conference and sent to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that package is led by the new rule on illustrative aids and a number of other rules.
So, we’ve basically cleared the deck, and we also have a number of new members or almost-new members. So, I thought it would be helpful to have more of a thinking meeting than an action meeting.
I asked Dan Capra to invite to our meeting a handful of highly respected top evidence scholars to tell us one or two ways in which they would amend the Rules of Evidence if they were king or queen of the evidence world. And as always, Dan’s execution was great, and in a minute I’m going to turn it over to him to introduce our guests and to moderate the discussion.