Edward K. Cheng
Professor of Law
Voice: (615) 875-7630
Fax: (615) 322-6631
Email: edward.cheng@vanderbilt.edu
Office: Room 297
View curriculum vitae (.pdf)
Personal Website
Links
Area(s) of Expertise
Evidence, torts, torts and tort reform, litigation and dispute resolution, law science and technology, empirical analysis of the law, class action and aggregate litigation
Research Interest(s)
Statistical approaches to evidence
Education
J.D. Harvard Law School
M.A. Columbia University (statistics)
M. Sc. London School of Economics and Political Science
B.S.E. Princeton University
Biography
Ed Cheng's research focuses on scientific and expert evidence, and the interaction between law and statistics. Professor Cheng is a coauthor of Modern Scientific Evidence: The Law and Science of Expert Testimony, a five-volume treatise which is updated annually. His articles, in which he explores evidence law from an empirical and statistical perspective, have been published in the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review and Stanford Law Review, among other prestigious law journals. He holds a B.S.E. (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in electrical engineering from Princeton University, where he also earned a certificate from the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs; an M.Sc. in information systems (with distinction) from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he was a Fulbright Scholar; and a J.D. (cum laude) from Harvard Law School. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in statistics at Columbia University. Professor Cheng teaches Evidence, Torts, and Statistical Inference in the Law, and is a winner of the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award for excellence in teaching. He is affiliated with Vanderbilt's Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program.
Representative Publications
Books
Modern Scientific Evidence: The Law and Science of Expert Testimony, Thomson West (5 volumes) (2011-12 edition) (with David Faigman, Joseph Sanders, Erin Murphy, Jennifer Mnookin and Jeremy Blumenthal)
Articles
"Reconceptualizing the Burden of Proof," 122 Yale Law Journal (forthcoming 2012)
"When 10 Trials Are Better Than 1000: An Evidentiary Perspective on Trial Sampling," 160 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 955 (2012)
"A Practical Solution to the Reference Class Problem," 109 Columbia Law Review 2081 (2009)
"Will Quants Rule the (Legal) World?," 107 Michigan Law Review 967 (2009) (book review)
"The Myth of the Generalist Judge," 61 Stanford Law Review 519 (2008)
"Independent Judicial Research in the Daubert Age," 56 Duke Law Journal 1263 (2007)
"Same Old, Same Old: Scientific Evidence Past and Present," 104 Michigan Law Review 1387 (2006) (book review)
"Structural Laws and the Puzzle of Regulating Behavior," 100 Northwestern University Law Review 655 (2006)
"Does Frye or Daubert Matter?: A Study of Scientific Admissibility Standards," 91 Virginia Law Review 471 (2005) (with Albert Yoon)
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