Law Commons^™

Suggestions For Circuit Court Review Of Local Procedures, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

During the 1980s, both the Judicial Conference of the United States, which is the policy-making arm of the federal courts, and Congress evinced increasing concern about the proliferation of local civil procedures, such as local rules and the procedures that individual judges apply The Judicial Conference and Congress were particularly troubled by those local procedural requirements that conflicted with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Federal Rules) or provisions of the United States Code.

In 1986, the Judicial Conference commissioned the Local Rules Project to collect and organize all local rules, standing orders of individual judges, and other local procedural …

Expert Witness Testimony: Back To The Future, L. Timothy Perrin

University of Richmond Law Review

Expert witnesses are at once detested and treasured. The scorn is significant because of the increasingly prominent role experts play in both civil and criminal litigation. Experts are seen as mercenaries, prostitutes or hired guns, witnesses devoid of principle who sell their opinions to the highest bidder. Experts are not impartial professionals who explain difficult concepts to the trier of fact. Rather, experts become advocates for the side who hired them. The consequences of this role change are not desirable: experts testify to matters beyond their expertise, render opinions that are unreliable, speculative or outside what the experts would be …