Professor Berger is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading authorities on scientific evidentiary issues, in particular DNA evidence, and is a frequent lecturer across the country on these topics. She is a recipient of the Francis Rawle Award for outstanding contributions to the field of post-admission legal education by the American Law Institute/American Bar Association for her role in developing new approaches to judicial treatment of scientific evidence and in educating the legal and science communities about ways to implement these approaches. Professor Berger served as the Reporter for the Working Group on Post-Conviction Issues for the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. She has been called on as a consultant to the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government, and served as the Reporter to the Advisory Committee on Federal Rules of Evidence. She is the author of numerous amicus briefs, including the brief for the Carnegie commission on the Admissibility of scientific evidence in the landmark case of Daubert v. Merrell Pharmaceutical, Inc. She has also contributed chapters to both editions of the Federal Judicial Center's Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence (1994, 2000). Her textbook, Evidence: Cases and Materials (9th ed., 1991) (with Weinstein, Mansfield and Abrams), is the leading evidence casebook. Professor Berger has been a member of the faculty since 1973, and holds the Suzanne J. and Norman Miles Chair. She has served on committees of the National Academies of Science: (1) Committee on Tagging Smokeless and Black Powder, and (2) Committee on DNA Technology in Forensic Science: An Update. She currently serves as a member of the National Academies' Committee on Science, Technology, and Law, on the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Evaluation of the Presumptive Disability Decision-Making Process for Veterans, and on the newly constituted Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Science Community, as well as the Committee on Assuring the Integrity of Research Data in an Era of E-Science.
Articles
Introduction of Jack B. Weinstein, 38 Seton Hall L. Rev. 861 (2008)
From the Wrong End of the Telescope: A Response to Professor David Bernstein, 104 Mich. L. Rev. 1983 (2006)
In this article the authors respond to Professor David Bernstein's critique of their article advocating...
Introduction [Symposium: Science For Judges IV: Agent Orange and Research on Human Behavior], 15 J.L. & Pol’y. 1 (2006)
The Impact of DNA Exonerations on the Criminal Justice System, 34 J.L. Med. & Ethics 320 (2006)
Introduction [Symposium: Science For Judges III: Maintaining the Integrity of Scientific Research and Forensic Evidence in Criminal Proceedings], 13 J.L. & Pol’y. 1 (2005)
Books
Student Edition of Weinstein’s Evidence Manual (with J.B. Weinstein) (2005)
Student Edition of Weinstein's Evidence Manual (with J. B. Weinstein) (1999)
Evidence: Cases and Materials (with J. B. Weinstein, J. Mansfield, and N. Abrams) (1997)
Contributions to Books
Research on Eyewitness Testimony and False Confessions, Beyond Common Sense: Psychological Science in the Courtroom (2008)
Evidence Law to Protect the Civil Defendant, but Not the Accused , Law and Class in America: Trends Since the Cold War (2006)
Lessons From DNA: Restriking the Balance Between Finality and Justice, DNA and the Criminal Justice System: The Technology of Justice (2004)
Raising the Bar: The Impact of DNA Testing on the Field of Forensics , Perspectives on Crime and Justice: 2000-2001 Lecture Series (2002)
Conceptions of Science: Defining the Disconnect [Panelist] , National Conference on Science and the Law Proceedings (2000)
Other
Converting Unknown Risk into Phantom Risk (reviewing K.R. Foster, D.E. Bernstein, and P.W. Huber eds., Phantom Risk: Scientific Inference and the Law (1999)), Books-on-Law (1999)
Teaching U.S. Evidence Law in the 21st Century (edited version of a speech given at the Evidence Section of 1999 AALS annual meeting), International Commentary on Evidence (1999)
This is an edited version of a speech given at the Evidence Section of the...