Abstract
In 1993, the Supreme Court fired a shot across the bow of the forensic science world when it issued its majority opinion in the landmark Daubert v. Merrell Dow case. A 2001 study by the Rand Institute for Civil Justice concluded that in the years immediately following the Supreme Court's 1993 Daubert ruling, the number of successful challenges to experts' qualifications and evidence reliability rose. This chapter traces the evolving evidentiary standards in US courts from the early days of scientific testimony in the courtroom up to the modern Daubert standard and its progeny. Beginning in the mid-1960s, the US Supreme Court undertook an extensive review of the existing standards for the admissibility of evidence in federal courts and the need for greater uniformity. In 2013, the Department of Justice established the National Commission on Forensic Science, in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to bolster the validity of the forensic sciences.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | Forensic Anthropology and the United States Judicial System |
Publisher | wiley |
Pages | 19-40 |
Number of pages | 22 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781119469957 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781119470052 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 5 2019 |
Keywords
- Daubert v. Merrell Dow
- Expert evidence
- Federal rules
- Forensic sciences
- Rand Institute for Civil Justice
- Scientific testimony
- Toxic tort litigation
- US Supreme Court
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Medicine