Evidence Rulemaking: Balancing the Separation of Powers

In State v. DeJesus, the Connecticut Supreme Court asserted its common law supervisory authority to adopt a rule of evidence that contradicts a rule on the same subject in Connecticut’s Code of Evidence, adopted by the judges of the superior court in 2000. Questions raised by the DeJesus opinion relate to the inherent power of the judiciary, at any level, to adopt rules of evidence and the relationship among courts in a hierarchical system in which higher courts have supervisory authority over those below. Although decisional law suggests that a state’s highest court has the inherent rulemaking and supervisory power to create evidence rules for trial courts, the unsettled judicial and legislative reaction to DeJesus provides a warrant for the Connecticut Supreme Court to adopt the Code of Evidence in collaboration with the General Assembly