Georgetown University Law Center Scholarship @ GEORGETOWN LAW 1997 Sexual Character Evidence in Civil Actions: Refining the Propensity Rule Jane H. Aiken Georgetown University Law Center,
[email protected] This paper can be downloaded free of charge from: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1403 1997 Wis. L. Rev. 1221-1273 (1997) This open-access article is brought to you by the Georgetown Law Library. Posted with permission of the author. Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub Part of the Civil Law Commons, Civil Procedure Commons, and the Sexuality and the Law Commons ARTICLE SEXUAL CHARACTER EVIDENCE IN CIVIL ACTIONS: REFINING THE PROPENSITY RULE JANE HARRIS AIKEN* Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoiled name, th' austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i' th' state, Will so your accusation overweigh That you shall stifle in your own report And smell of calumny. Say what you can, my false o 'erweighs your true. 1 "With only one accuser . and everyone else saying something contrary, the public is doubtful. But with two accusers, no matter what the second's credibility, the public really listens. '11 • Professor of Law, Washington University School of Law. I thank the University of South Carolina for summer research support and Washington University for research support and a reduced teaching load during the writing of this article. I also want to thank Katherine Goldwasser and Richard Kuhns, evidence experts, who guided me in the production and refinement of the ideas, the Washington University faculty for their intellectual support through the brown bag series and particularly, Neil Bernstein, Kathleen Clark, Clark Cunningham, Barbara Flagg, Brad Joondeph, Daniel Keating, Pauline Kim, Ronald Levin, Karen Tokarz and Peter Wiedenbeck.