The Legal, Political, and Social Filtering of Expert Witnesses into Court

University Of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee WI

Investigators

Abstract

Expert witnesses appear frequently in courts and their impact on judges and jurors has been studied extensively. However, before experts testify they first must be admitted into court by trial judges. Given experts’ potential to influence court cases and judicial precedent, judges’ decisions about which experts to admit and which to exclude are vitally important. The legal framework for these decisions focuses on the scientific qualities of expert evidence, such as its reliability. However, the scientific qualities of specialized expert evidence are difficult for non-experts to judge. This study investigates the social and political factors related to the admissibility of expert evidence in court. Specifically, it examines how social cues such as experts’ sex, age, and discipline relate to perceptions of their credibility and the admissibility of their evidence. The findings can inform courts’ use of expert evidence by revealing social biases that may interfere with expert admissibility. This research therefore has the potential to improve legal decision making by identifying the social and political factors involved with the entry of expert evidence into court. The PI and a team of graduate assistants will content-code a large probability sample of written judicial opinions on expert admissibility from federal district courts. Data from judicial opinions will be combined with socio-demographic information about judges and experts not contained in judicial opinions. Statistical analyses of the resulting dataset will provide a comprehensive survey of overall rates and distributions of admissibility challenges and decisions in federal courts. These data will also advance our understanding of how social characteristics of judges and experts relate to the admissibility of expert evidence. Existing theories of expert admissibility prioritize the scientific merit of expert evidence. This project widens the analytic lens to capture the social and political forces that filter perceptions of experts and make some experts seem more credible than others. Understanding the attributes of judges and expert witnesses associated with expert admissibility will help future litigants deploy—and contest—expert evidence more effectively. Better knowledge of these processes will also assist judges in their evaluations of expert evidence when they determine its admissibility, thereby improving the quality of expert evidence allowed into courts. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.