Saturday, July 26, 2014

IRVING YOUNGER - SAGE OF CROSS-EXAMINATION

Watch Irving Younger Discuss the Ten Commandments of Cross

Whenever we get to the subject of cross-examination in my law school class and I (Bob) mention Professor Irving Younger the students give me blank stares. None of them seem to have heard anything at all about Professor Younger or his famous Ten Commandments of Cross-Examination. Younger began his legal career in 1958 with a brief stint as a litigation associate in a large New York law firm. It wasn’t long before he took a position as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, a position which he held until his election as a New York City Civil Court Judge in 1968.  In 1974 he resigned his judgeship and began a distinguished academic career as a law professor at Cornell University. Younger also served as a lecturer on the CLE circuit, and his most popular presentation had to be his presentation on the Ten Commandments of Cross-Examination.

Younger was a dynamic, charismatic speaker who always entertained while he was educating. Everyone who practiced trial law from the mid-1970’s through the 1980’s knew and used Younger’s Ten Commandments (his Commandments are discussed in Cross-Examination Handbook along with exceptions to the Commandments). Younger died in 1988. Twenty-first century trial lawyers can profit by knowing the commandments, and there could be no better way to teach those commandments than to let Younger tell you about them himself.


Click here to watch Professor Irving Younger holding forth on the Ten Commandments of Cross-Examination.

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