"American Exception: In U.S., Expert Witnesses Are Partisan"

Source: ADAM LIPTAK, The New York Times, August 11, 2008.

Excerpt:

In most of the rest of the world, expert witnesses are selected by judges and are meant to be neutral and independent. Many foreign lawyers have long questioned the American practice of allowing the parties to present testimony from experts they have chosen and paid.

The European judge who visits the United States experiences “something bordering on disbelief when he discovers that we extend the sphere of partisan control to the selection and preparation of experts,” John H. Langbein, a law professor at Yale, wrote in a classic article in The University of Chicago Law Review more than 20 years ago.

Partisan experts do appear in court in other common-law nations, including Canada, Singapore and New Zealand. But the United States amplifies their power by using juries in civil cases, a practice most of the common-law world has rejected.

Comment: I don't really object to advocates using expert testimony to support their cases. On the other hand, it seems to me that courts and juries should have access to disinterested scientific advice on the science of forensic evidence. There are means by which judges can obtain such advice, but I suspect juries are passive in this respect and that there should be much more financing for the provision of disinterested scientific advice to judges and juries.

Of course, the advocates should be given advance warning of the testimony of the courts experts and the chance to present expert witnesses to refute that testimony. JAD