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Full-Text Articles in Law

Expert Witness Malpractice, Michael Flynn Oct 2018

Expert Witness Malpractice, Michael Flynn

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Virtue Of Process: Finding The Legitimacy Of Judicial Fact-Finding In Personal Injury Litigation, Nayha Acharya May 2017

The Virtue Of Process: Finding The Legitimacy Of Judicial Fact-Finding In Personal Injury Litigation, Nayha Acharya

PhD Dissertations

This thesis is an inquiry into the legitimacy of judicial fact-finding in civil litigation. Judges make authoritative factual findings in conditions of uncertainty and the decision-making process cannot, and does not, guarantee the accuracy of those outcomes. Given the inevitable risk of error, on what basis is the authority of judicial fact-finding legitimate? This project provides a framework of procedural legitimacy that bridges two unavoidable aspects of adjudication: factual indeterminacy and the need for justifiably authoritative dispute resolution. This work draws of the legal theories of Lon Fuller and Jurgen Habermas to substantiate the notion of procedural legitimacy in the …


Changing The Culture Of Disclosure And Forensics, Valena Beety Jan 2017

Changing The Culture Of Disclosure And Forensics, Valena Beety

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Essay responds to Professor Brandon Garrett’s Constitutional Regulation of Forensic Evidence, and, in particular, his identification of the dire need to change the culture of disclosing forensic evidence. My work on forensics is—similarly to Garrett’s—rooted in both scholarship and litigation of wrongful convictions. From this perspective, I question whether prosecutors fully disclose forensics findings and whether defense attorneys understand these findings and their impact on a client’s case. To clarify forensic findings for the entire courtroom, this Essay suggests increased pre-trial discovery and disclosure of forensic evidence and forensic experts. Forensic analysts largely work in police-governed labs; therefore, this …


New Rules Of War In The Battle Of The Experts: Amending The Expert Witness Disqualification Test For Conflicts Of Interest, Nina A. Vershuta Jan 2016

New Rules Of War In The Battle Of The Experts: Amending The Expert Witness Disqualification Test For Conflicts Of Interest, Nina A. Vershuta

Brooklyn Law Review

In civil litigation, the big business of retaining experts has raised concerns about the integrity of the adversarial process and undermined the role that expert testimony plays at trial. Due to a rising demand for expert testimony, it is common for the same expert to testify for opposing clients. When a client hires an expert who has been previously retained by that client’s adversary, a conflict of interest arises. Such experts may share confidential information with their new client to the detriment of the former client—triggering the expert disqualification test for conflicts of interest. Most state and federal courts do …


Experts, Statistics, Science & Bad Science, Curtis E.A. Karnow Nov 2015

Experts, Statistics, Science & Bad Science, Curtis E.A. Karnow

Curtis E.A. Karnow

Articles, books, and other online resources relating to expert testimony with a specific focus on problems with peer review, bad science, and statistics


Death By Daubert: The Continued Attack On Private Antitrust, Christine P. Bartholomew Aug 2014

Death By Daubert: The Continued Attack On Private Antitrust, Christine P. Bartholomew

Journal Articles

In 2011, with five words of dicta, the Supreme Court opened Pandora’s box for private antitrust enforcement. By suggesting trial courts must evaluate the admissibility of expert testimony at class certification, the Court placed a significant obstacle in the path of antitrust class actions. Following the Supreme Court’s lead, most courts now permit parties to bring expert challenges far earlier than the traditional summary judgment or pretrial timing. Premature rejection of expert testimony dooms budding private antitrust suits — cases that play an essential role in modern antitrust enforcement. The dangers for private antitrust plaintiffs are compounded by the Court’s …


Misapplication Of The Attorney Malpractice Paradigm To Litigation Services: "Suit Within A Suit" Shortcomings Compel Witness Immunity For Experts, Adam J. Myers Iii Oct 2012

Misapplication Of The Attorney Malpractice Paradigm To Litigation Services: "Suit Within A Suit" Shortcomings Compel Witness Immunity For Experts, Adam J. Myers Iii

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.


Confrontation, Experts, And Rule 703, Paul C. Giannelli Jan 2012

Confrontation, Experts, And Rule 703, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

The United States Supreme Court has decided several cases concerning expert testimony and the Confrontation Clause. This essay argues that confrontation issues are complicated by Federal Evidence Rules 73 and 75, which changed the common law rules. Altering the common law made sense in civil cases because civil rules of procedure provide extensive discovery, which ensures basic fairness. In contrast, discovery in criminal cases is quite limited, which undercuts an accused’s ability to meaningfully confront prosecution experts at trial.


Confrontation And Forensic Laboratory Reports, Round Four, Richard D. Friedman Jan 2012

Confrontation And Forensic Laboratory Reports, Round Four, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

Crawford v. Washington radically transformed the doctrine governing the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution. Before Crawford, a prosecutor could introduce against an accused evidence of a hearsay statement, even one made in contemplation that it would be used in prosecution, so long as the statement fit within a "firmly rooted" hearsay exception or the court otherwise determined that the statement was sufficiently reliable to warrant admissibility. Crawford recognized that the Clause is a procedural guarantee, governing the manner in which prosecution witnesses give their testimony. Therefore, a prosecutor may not introduce a statement that is testimonial …


An Uninvited Guest: The Federal Death Penalty And The Massachusetts Prosecution Of Nurse Kristen Gilbert, John P. Cunningham May 2007

An Uninvited Guest: The Federal Death Penalty And The Massachusetts Prosecution Of Nurse Kristen Gilbert, John P. Cunningham

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.


“Misconvictions,” Science And The Ministers Of Justice, Jane Campbell Moriarty Jan 2007

“Misconvictions,” Science And The Ministers Of Justice, Jane Campbell Moriarty

Jane Campbell Moriarty

DNA evidence has exonerated over two hundred wrongfully convicted defendants in the last several years, providing insights into the causes of such convictions. One such cause, faulty scientific evidence, is a focus of this article. For decades, many have written about the prevalence of and reasons for wrongful convictions --what I have termed “misconvictions.” A few reasons support the coinage “misconvictions”: the miscarriage of justice when an innocent person is convicted; the mistakes involved in the prosecution and trial of the case; the mistaken identification that may have occurred; and finally, the recognition that all wrongful convictions are a missed …


Reliability And The Admissibility Of Experts, Dale A. Nance Jan 2003

Reliability And The Admissibility Of Experts, Dale A. Nance

Faculty Publications

Modern law on expert testimony insists, as a condition of admissibility, that the asserted expertise be determined by the trial judge to be reliable. Reliability is usually characterized as a dichotomous attribute of evidence, as if expertise were either reliable or unreliable. This article argues that making progress in the development of meaningful and appropriate restrictions on the admissibility of expert testimony requires that we abandon this conceptualization and understand the implications of endorsing a gradational notion of reliability in which evidence can be more or less reliable and in which a comparative assessment of reliability is prominent. Consistent with …


Cross-Examining Expertise In The Wto Dispute Settlement Process, Christopher T. Timura Jan 2002

Cross-Examining Expertise In The Wto Dispute Settlement Process, Christopher T. Timura

Michigan Journal of International Law

Part I of this Note surveys some of the recent contributions that social theorists and social scientists have made to our understanding of the role of experts in society, and also the structure of expert communities. Experts are everywhere in modern life, and individuals are with increasing frequency asked to extend their trust to experts and bodies of knowledge that they have little or no opportunity to question. Part II highlights how the WTO Agreement deals with experts, using recent WTO panel reports to illustrate the ways in which the DSB has operationalized its various provisions. Part III suggests two …


The Other Shoe Drops: Minnesota Rejects Daubert, Peter B. Knapp Jan 2002

The Other Shoe Drops: Minnesota Rejects Daubert, Peter B. Knapp

Faculty Scholarship

In 1991, the United States Supreme Court handed decided Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., rejecting the long-standing federal test for the admissibility of scientific testimony articulated in Frye v. United States. Unlike many states, however, which embraced Daubert within years--or even months--of the federal decision, Minnesota declined to make Daubert the law of the jurisdiction. In a pair of cases decided in 2000, Goeb v. Tharaldson and Sentinel Mgmt. v. Aetna Casualty & Surety, the court held that Minnesota would retain the general acceptance test. The court's rejection of Daubert can be read as an attempt to give the …


Rule 702: Testimony By Experts Jan 1996

Rule 702: Testimony By Experts

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.


"X-Spurt" Witnesses, Richard H. Underwood Oct 1995

"X-Spurt" Witnesses, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this article the author pulls together a history of expert witnesses in common law systems. Various issues are explored regarding expert witness testimony, including: the historical underpinnings of the practice, how Daubert controls that issue in modern times, rules of evidence, psychological science, and professional ethics.


The Law Of Expert Testimony, Henry Wade Rogers Dec 1882

The Law Of Expert Testimony, Henry Wade Rogers

Books

The purpose which the writer had in mind in the preparation of this monograph, was to furnish to the practitioner a more extended presentation of the law relating to expert testimony, than is afforded in the treatises on evidence. It seemed desirable that the law on this important subject should be set forth with more of detail than it has been found practicable to do in the general treatises of the law of evidence. The cases relating to expert testimony are so numerous and so diversified in character, that any attempt to bring them all together, and give to them …