The Supreme Court's 1993 decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., holding that the admissibility of scientific evidence depends on its scientific merit, has made American law receptive to valid science to an unprecedented degree. We review the implications for psychology of the law's taking science seriously. We consider the law before Daubert, and the ways that Daubert as well...

The confession of a criminal defendant serves as a prosecutor's most compelling piece of evidence during trial. Courts must preserve a defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial while upholding the judicial interests of presenting competent and reliable evidence to the jury. When a defendant seeks to challenge the validity of that confession through expert testimony, the prosecution often...

Suicide continues to be a recognized as a crime by common law in a few states. In those jurisdictions, the beneficiary of a claim must prove that the individual who attempted or committed suicide was of unsound mind, to avoid having the patient's act declared illegal, which would bar recovery of the claim. In malpractice and insurance cases, expert testimony is required regarding the mental sta...

OGY,” the Technical Advisory Service for Attorneys (TASA) Web site lists more than 9,500 categories of experts. Large accounting firms and other forensic firms perform litigation support services. And the Martindale-Hubbell directory contains more than 4,000 experts, services, suppliers, and consultants. In just a few decades, expert witnesses in litigation have gone from a rarity to the common...

v. Papastavros, 323 Conn. 275 (Sept. 27, 2016), the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that expert testimony is required to establish the element of causation in a legal malpractice case. Thus, even where an attorney’s performance was deficient, if the plaintiff cannot present expert testimony that the outcome of her case would have been different but for the attorney’s negligence, the attorney wi...

The relevance and admissibility of expert medical testimony in relation to medical malpractice suits requires a more successful development of formal criteria and a more intentional compliance with efficient judicial procedures. The American judicial system provides an excellent model for implementation of a critical approach to knowledge collection, the evaluation of the validity of scientific...

When mental health professionals testify in insanity defense cases (more generally, about mental state at the time of the offense [MSO]), opinion testimony is generally solicited after the prefatory question as to whether the forthcoming opinions are held with “reasonable medical certainty” (psychiatrists) or “reasonable scientific certainty” (nonmedical experts). The question and its answer—al...

In federal courts, the admissibility of scientific expert testimony in the last century has been governed by three major standards. The first of these standards, the "general acceptance" test, arose from the 1923 Frye v. United States (Frye) and required that any technique or method introduced in court be generally accepted by the relevant community of scientists. The more liberal "relevancy" s...