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Full-Text Articles in Law
Embracing Deference, Edward K. Cheng, Elodie O. Currier, Payton B. Hampton
Embracing Deference, Edward K. Cheng, Elodie O. Currier, Payton B. Hampton
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
A fundamental conceptual problem has long dogged discussions about scientific and other expert evidence in the courtroom. In American law, the problem was most famously posed by Judge Learned Hand, who asked: "[H]ow can the jury judge between two statements each founded upon an experience confessedly foreign in kind to their own? It is just because they are incompetent for such a task that the expert is necessary at all." This puzzle, sometimes known as the "expert paradox," is quite general. It applies not only to the jury as factfinder, but also to the judge as gate- keeper under the …
Beyond The Witness: Bringing A Process Perspective, Edward K. Cheng, G. Alexander Nunn
Beyond The Witness: Bringing A Process Perspective, Edward K. Cheng, G. Alexander Nunn
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
For centuries, the foundation of the Anglo-American trial has been the witness.' Witnesses report on their personal observations, provide opinions of character, offer scientific explanations, and in the case of parties, narrate their own story. Indeed, even for documentary and other physical evidence, witnesses often provide the conduit through which such evidence reaches the factfinder. Documentary or physical evidence rarely stands on its own. The law of evidence has thus unsurprisingly focused on-or perhaps obsessed over-witnesses. The hearsay rule and the Confrontation Clause demand that declarants be available witnesses at trial so that they may be subject to cross-examination.' Expert …
Group To Individual Inference In Scientific Expert Testimony, Christopher Slobogin, David Faigman, John Monahan
Group To Individual Inference In Scientific Expert Testimony, Christopher Slobogin, David Faigman, John Monahan
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
A fundamental divide exists between what scientists do as scientists and what courts often ask them to do as expert witnesses. Whereas scientists almost invariably inquire into phenomena at the group level, trial courts typically need to resolve cases at the individual level. In short, scientists generalize while courts particularize. A basic challenge for trial courts that rely on scientific experts, therefore, concerns determining whether and how scientific knowledge derived from studying groups can be helpful in the individual cases before them (what this Article refers to as "G2i'). To aid in dealing with this challenge, this Article proposes a …