Articles on Scientific Evidence in Newest Issue of Judicature

The most recent volume of Judicature, the journal of the American Judicature Society, proposes a series of articles on how courts should deal with issues relating to scientific evidence:

• Should Judges do independent research on scientific issues: "To many judges, doing independent research when confronted with new and unfamiliar material seems the most responsible and natural thing to do. To others, it represents the worst kind of overreaching and a threat to long-cherished adversarial values. "
• Appellate courts must conduct independent research of Daubert issues to discover "junk science" : "Daubert scientific issues represent a unique area of the law. More so than traditional evidentiary issues, Daubert issues transcend individual cases. A ruling on the validity of a science utilized in one case will affect every other case in that jurisdiction. As the hypothetical case demonstrates, this can be disastrous if the parties are unprepared and neglect to provide the trial judge with any useful information regarding a scientific theory’s validity."
• Appellate courts should resist the temptation to conduct their own independent research on scientific issues : "Three reasons for this are apparent. First, gathering scientific literature on a subject is essentially a fact-finding mission—a task alien to appellate decision making. Second, appellate courts lack critical tools available at the trial level for determining truth and for assessing the credibility and reliability of evidence. Finally, reasonable alternatives independent research exist."
• Virginia's answer to Daubert's question behind the question: "Who determines if the science is reliable? Virginia assumes the jury can usually be trusted to separate the sheep from the goats."

Earlier Library Boy posts on the issues of science and the law include:

• Allan Legere Digital Archive - 1st Serial Killer Convicted by DNA Typing (April 24, 2006): "The Gerard V. La Forest Law Library at the University of New Brunswick yesterday launched a digital archive of documents and images related to the crimes, capture and trial of Allan Joseph Legere (...)His trial in 1991 was the first in which the new science of DNA typing was used to obtain a criminal conviction in Canada and was therefore a landmark in Canadian legal history"
• Science and Law Resources (August 21, 2006): "Last week, the Science & Law Blog was launched. In the introductory post, the authors, all law professors, explained that their blog is devoted to 'the single question of how does, and how should, courts and policy makers use the more or less certain findings (or lack of findings) from science when making decisions'."
• Update on Science and Law Resources (August 26, 2006): "A recent article from LLRX.com - It’s Not Rocket Science: Making Sense of Scientific Evidence - explains how common web search engines as well as specialized engines that explore the 'Deep Web' can be used to find material on the reliability of scientific evidence in the legal context."