Law Commons^™

Believing In Products Liability: Reflections On Daubert, Doctrinal Evolution, And David Owen's "Products Liability Law", Richard L. Cupp

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

The Overlapping Magisteria Of Law And Science: When Litigation And Science Collide, William G. Childs

ExpressO

The Supreme Court’s 1993 decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals transformed courts’ evaluation of expert testimony. Many courts, applying Daubert, focus extensively on whether the purported expert’s methodology has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

This focus on peer review results in two unintended consequences that have triggered criticism: litigation-driven scholarship and litigants taking discovery into the peer review process. Critics contend that litigation-driven scholarship is irredeemably biased and that peer review discovery is too often an effort to intimidate scholars from speaking on subjects of public concern.

In this Article, I explore these phenomena and the criticisms of …

Dangerousness And Expertise Redux, Christopher Slobogin

ExpressO

Civil commitment, confinement under sexual predator laws, and many capital and noncapital sentences depend upon proof of a propensity toward violence. This article discusses the current state of prediction science, in particular the advantages and disadvantages of clinical and actuarial prediction, and then analyzes how the rules of evidence should be interpreted in deciding whether opinions about propensity should be admissible. It concludes that dangerousness predictions that are not based on empirically-derived probability estimates should be excluded from the courtroom unless the defense decides otherwise. This conclusion is not bottomed on the usual concern courts and commentators raise about expert …