The U.S. Revolution
| Author | Alan D. Gold |
| Pages | 25-37 |
Chapter
2: The
U.S. Revolution
U.S. Developments
IN
the
United States
the
admissibility
of
expert
evidence
in
U.S. federal
courts underwent
a sea
change
in the
last decade when
the
U.S. Supreme
Court,
interpreting
the
Federal Rules
of
Evidence, mandated scientific
validity
as the
hallmark
of
expert testimony.
It was in
1993
in
Daubert
v.
Merrell
Dow
Pharmaceuticals^
that
the
Court
settled
the
principles
of
admission
of
expert testimony under
the
Federal Rules
of
Evidence
(Rules
702
through
706).
The
Court implicitly adopted
the
foundational view
that,
as the
physi-
cist Richard Feynman
put it,
science
is
what
we
have learned about
how
to
keep from fooling ourselves. Consequently,
to be on
solid epistemic
ground,
the
Court
in
Daubert
expressly held that
the law
would accept
as
expert opinion evidence only what
good
science would accept,
and
noth-
ing
less.2
Daubert
held
as
follows:
(1993)
[Daubert].
2 "A
review
of all the
briefs,
motions,
and
amicus curiae
briefs
submitted
to the
court
in
this
case strongly suggests that
the
decision
is
primarily based
on the
amicus brief submitted
by
the
Carnegie Commission
on
Science, Technology,
and
Government
as
Amicus
Curiae
in
Support
of
Neither Party
—
This
is the
only brief that contains reference
to the
princi-
ple of
falsifiability,
testability,
and
replication.
It is the
suggested framework
of
this brief
as
a
replacement
for the
Frye Rule that
is
adopted
by the
Supreme Court
in its
decision":
Ralph Underwager
&
Hollida
Wakefield,
"A
Paradigm
Shift
for
Expert Witnesses,"
avail-
able
on the
Internet
at
html>.
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