for their encouragement and helpful comments on early drafts. Thanks also to Christine Zonkel for her patience in expertly typing multiple drafts, to Jennifer Mathews for her excellent work editing this piece for the California Law Review, and special thanks to David Greenberg, my best in-house editor. In particular, I wish to express my deep gratitude to Rabbi Debra Orenstein and Professors Kathryn Abrams, Lynne Henderson, and Susan Williams, whose intellectual generosity and critical engagement through multiple drafts improved this Article immeasurably. Obviously, any mistakes are entirely my own, owing, no doubt, to my failure to follow their good counsel.

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In 2004, Crawford v. Washington, authored by Justice Scalia, revolutionized the law of confrontation by requiring that, aside from two discrete exceptions, all testimonial statements (those made with the expectation that they will serve to prosecute the accused) be subject to cross-examination. This new interpretation of the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause has profoundly affected domestic violence cases, making it much harder to prosecute them successfully. Although Justice Scalia's approach to confrontation is new, it is strikingly similar to the analysis in Regina v. Bedingfield, a notorious English murder case, which excluded from the evidence an alleged statement by the murder victim. The analysis of the res gestae hearsay exception, which was central to excluding the victim's statement in Bedingfield, focused on the timing of her statement, her intent in making it, and whether an ongoing emergency existed when the declaration was made. Justice Scalia's rigid, formalistic approach to testimonial statements in Davis v. Washington, another in the line of new confrontation cases, is analogous and ultimately as confusing and unworkable as Bedingfield's res gestae analysis. Although Bedingfield arose in 1879, its facts, replete with verbal abuse, intoxication, unheeded pleas for police protection, and ultimately, murder when the victim tried to break off the relationship, resonate with modern experiences of domestic violence. Both the Bedingfield case and Justice Scalia's confrontation jurisprudence fail to account for the practical

This essay by Susan Seizer and Aviva Orenstein presents and analyzes the stand-up comedy of Stewart Huff, a regional road comic whose work is a stellar example of truth-telling through humor. His show God Hates Ann (2017) exposes and critiques sloppy and narrow-minded anti-science arguments and bigoted attitudes. Through a hilarious, if sometimes horrifying, march through the history of intolerance to new scientific ideas, Huff demonstrates the folly of resisting change, and challenges uncritical devotion to tradition. The contributors focus on both the subversive content of Huff’s act and his engaging form of delivery to explore how he expertly embodies the duality of being a “P.I.” —simultaneously Private Investigator and Public Intellectual.