Classics

Modern forensic evidence suffers from a number of flaws, including insufficient scientific grounding, exaggerated testimony, lack of uniform best practices, and an inefficacious standard for admission that regularly allows judges to admit scientifically unsound evidence. This Note discusses these problems, lays out the current landscape of forensic science reform, and suggests the addition of a new special relevance rule to the Federal Rules of Evidence (and similar rules in state evidence codes). This proposed rule would cabin judicial discretion to admit non-DNA forensic evidence by barring prosecutorial introduction of such evidence in criminal trials absent a competing defense expert or a high showing of scientific viability.

This paper gives an interpretative summary of the scope and content of astrological passages in the philosophical Hermetica. The term 'philosophical Hermetica' refers mainly to the eighteen extant tractates in Greek and Latin associated with the mythical figure of Hermes Trismegistus; to this we must add the surviving Hermetic fragments found in the Anthology compiled by Ioannes Stobaeus in the 5 th century C.E. In view of the modern association of Hermetism and astrology, one might suppose that the Hermetica must be replete with astrological discourse, but such an expectation is going to be disappointed. What we would call astrology proper plays only a marginal role in these Hermetic writings, and the considerably older, more technical and observational discipline of astronomy none whatsoever. However, it is possible to say is that in this type of literature the viability and practice of astrology receives something like a metaphysical foundation or framework. This framework is erected over two fundamental tenets of Hermetism which, in and of themselves, have nothing to do with astrology: first the doctrine of the preeminent importance of the Sun and, second, the thesis of the essential divinity of mankind. The Sun, the most radiant celestial body by far, is identified, in ways that are not always clear and conspicuous, with the supreme deity of the universe and its life-giving creativity. It, or more precisely its light, is also connected to human consciousness. Human beings, in turn, are the descendants of an originary androgynous human who, as direct offspring of the supreme deity, ranks among the highest beings within god's creation. Together, these two doctrines establish the essential connection between the heavens and humanity.