Court Appointed Scientific Experts: A Demonstration Project of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. D. C. Runkle, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Scientific and technical issues are playing an increasingly important role in the courts, particularly in civil litigation, insuring that non-scientist judges, as well as juries, are more often faced with the need to make decisions regarding matters of which they have little initial knowledge. Traditionally, judges and juries receive their science education from experts retained by the parties. Many judges have expressed concerns that the traditional way of presenting technical evidence in the courts is not providing judges or juries with the knowledge and information necessary to arrive at reasoned and principled resolutions of disputes. A partial remedy that has been suggested is appointment of court experts under the authority of FRE 706. Justice Blackmun writing for the majority in Daubert, noted that 706 experts could help judges in arriving at pre-trial determinations on admissibility of evidence. While this option has been available to district judges for 25 years, it is used infrequently, despite the fact that almost 90 percent of judges surveyed by the Federal Judicial Center thought such appointments would be useful in select cases. Judges report that an important reason for not making such appointments is the lack of a resource to aid in identifying suitable experts. To address this problem, the American Association for the Advancement of Science initiated a project, Court Appointed Scientific Experts [CASE], that responds to requests from district judges by identifying highly qualified, independent experts who will be responsible to the court rather than to the parties to litigation. This paper will detail the origins and current status of the CASE project.
Go to . . .
2000 SRA Annual Meeting Table of Contents
2000 SRA Annual Meeting Author Index
Main Abstracts Menu Page
RiskWorld Home Page