Abstract
Expert testimony is offered at the overwhelming majority of trials conducted in the United States. In many of these cases, it is absolutely essential for the plaintiff or prosecutor to introduce such testimony. The plaintiff may need expert testimony to prove general causation in a toxic Tort case, and similarly the prosecutor may need to resort to expert testimony to establish the accused’s identity as the perpetrator of the charged crime. For decades, the proponents of expert testimony have mounted campaigns to lower the evidentiary barriers to expert testimony. For most of the 20th century, the governing American test for the admissibility of expert testimony was the Frye general acceptance standard. The courts espousing the standard characterized it as a conservative test that was needed to compensate for lay jurors’ tendency to ascribe excessive weight to new scientific theories and techniques. However, the proponents of expert testimony were astute enough to realize that the reach or scope of a test can be every bit as important as its rigor or strictness. Given Frye’s rationale, the proponents of expert testimony persuaded most Frye jurisdictions to narrow the substantive scope of the test to novel, instrumental, purportedly scientific testimony. Consequently, many courts exempted traditional forensic techniques, soft science, and nonscientific expert testimony from scrutiny.
Recommended Citation
Edward J. Imwinkelried,
Rigor or Reach? Strictness or Scope?: The Continuing Battle Over the Parameters of The Supreme Court’s Daubert/Kumho Reliability/Validation Test for the Admissibility of Expert Testimony,
89 Mo. L. Rev.
(2024)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr/vol89/iss2/9