COVER -- HALF-TITLE -- TITLE -- COPYRIGHT -- DEDICATION -- CONTENTS -- FIGURES -- PREFACE -- TABLE OF LEGISLATION -- Australia -- England and Wales -- France -- Germany -- International treaties -- Italy -- United States -- TABLE OF CASES -- Australia -- Canada -- England and Wales -- European Court of Human Rights -- France -- Hong Kong -- Ireland -- Italy -- Malaysia -- Northern Ireland -- Scotland -- Singapore -- United States of America -- INTRODUCTION -- 1 General epistemological issues -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Classical epistemology -- 1.3 Legal epistemology -- 1.3.1 What is 'legal epistemology'? -- 1.3.2 Why is legal epistemology special? -- 1.3.2.1 Collaborative fact finding -- 1.3.2.2 The effect of the finding of fact -- 1.3.2.3 Rules of admissibility and evaluation -- 1.3.2.4 The special relationship between legal process and truth -- 1.3.3 Institutional variations affecting legal epistemology -- 1.3.3.1 Differences between criminal and civil fact finding -- 1.3.3.2 The composition of the court -- 1.4 Justifying legal belief -- 1.4.1 Meta-justification: the Rationalist Tradition of evidence scholarship -- 1.4.2 Atomistic reasoning about individuated propositions of evidence -- 1.4.2.1 The graphical representation of evidential matrices -- 1.4.2.2 The problem of total inferential drag -- 1.4.3 Generalizations as inferential glue -- 1.5 The challenge of naturalized epistemology -- 1.5.1 Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment -- 1.5.2 How people process complex specialist information -- 1.6 Conclusion -- 2 Expert evidence as a special case for judicial assessment -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Questions of fact and opinion -- 2.2.1 The nature of the distinction in English law -- 2.2.2 Operative rationales for the distinction -- 2.2.2.1 Finality in fact finding -- 2.2.2.2 Constitutional role of the actors.

2.2.2.3 To safeguard other rules of evidence -- 2.2.2.4 To safeguard the tribunal's time -- 2.2.2.5 To safeguard the availability of perjury actions -- 2.2.3 Philosophical difficulties with the distinction -- 2.2.3.1 More than one meaning -- 2.2.3.2 Making a clear distinction -- 2.2.3.3 The contextual nature of the distinction -- 2.2.4 Should legal epistemology distinguish facts from opinions? -- 2.3 The court's access to specialist knowledge -- 2.3.1 Substance-blind evidential reasoning -- 2.3.1.1 The NIAS 1994-1995 Inter-Disciplinary Evidence Seminars -- 2.3.1.2 The Leverhulme/ESRC 'Evidence, Inference and Enquiry' research programme -- 2.3.2 Common investigative method -- 2.3.3 Did Hand really present a paradox? -- 2.4 Persistent communities of practice -- 2.5 Epistemological constructivism -- 2.5.1 Definition -- 2.5.2 Epistemological constructivism in modernity -- 2.5.3 Strong epistemological constructivism -- 2.5.3.1 Philosophy of sociology -- 2.5.3.2 Philosophy of science -- 2.5.4 Autopoietic social systems theory -- 2.5.4.1 Application to society and law -- 2.5.4.2 Application to the judicial assessment of expert evidence -- 2.5.4.3 Difficulties with applying the theory to expert evidence -- 2.6 Conclusion -- 3 Making sense of expert disagreement -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Legal and expert factual disagreement -- 3.2.1 The need for finality in legal fact finding -- 3.2.2 Reasons for disagreement in expert fact finding -- 3.2.3 Law's perception of scientific knowledge as objective certainty -- 3.3 The selection of generalization sets -- 3.3.1 Scientific realism -- 3.3.2 Logical positivism -- 3.3.3 Scientific constructivism -- 3.4 The application of generalizations to base facts -- 3.4.1 Disagreement in interpretation is accepted -- 3.4.2 Experts do not normally address such questions -- 3.4.3 Courts require special categories to be used.

3.4.4 Specifics from generals -- 3.5 Types of inferential challenge -- 3.5.1 The condition of a property -- 3.5.2 Quantum of damages in personal injury -- 3.5.3 Causation in personal injury -- 3.5.4 Causation in toxic torts -- 3.5.5 The best interests of the child -- 3.5.6 The standard of care in professional negligence -- 3.6 Expert bias -- 3.6.1 Expert disagreement resulting from bias -- 3.6.1.1 Personal interest -- 3.6.1.2 Financial interest -- 3.6.1.3 Intellectual interest -- 3.6.2 The manifestations of actual bias -- 3.6.2.1 Conscious bias -- 3.6.2.2 Unconscious bias -- 3.6.3 Personal and structural bias -- 3.7 Conclusion -- 4 Non-epistemological factors in determining the role of the expert -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 Five approaches to civil expert evidence -- 4.2.1 England and Wales: Civil Procedure Rules 1998 -- 4.2.2 United States of America: Federal Rules of Evidence 1975 -- 4.2.3 France: Nouveau code de procédure civile 1975 -- 4.2.4 Germany: Zivilprozessordnung 1933 -- 4.2.5 Italy: Codice di procedura civile 1940 -- 4.3 Five non-epistemological factors in expert role definition -- 4.3.1 The social function of civil litigation -- 4.3.1.1 The liberal state -- 4.3.1.2 The welfare state -- 4.3.1.3 The managerial State -- 4.3.1.4 The special nature of Family proceedings -- 4.3.2 The role of facts in civil procedure -- 4.3.2.1 The 'fact avoidance' hypothesis -- 4.3.2.2 'Fact avoidance' or 'fact aversion'? -- 4.3.2.3 Possible reasons for fact aversion -- 4.3.3 The appropriate conduct of civil litigation -- 4.3.3.1 The appropriate conduct of litigation lawyers -- 4.3.3.2 The appropriate conduct of party experts -- 4.3.4 The status of experts in society -- 4.3.5 The historical use of experts -- 4.4 Conclusion -- 5 Assessing expert evidence in the English civil courts: the sixteenth to twentieth centuries -- 5.1 Introduction.

5.2 Tracing the history of civil expert evidence, 1500-1800 -- 5.2.1 Source analysis -- 5.2.2 Civil courts before the Judicature Acts 1873 and 1875 -- 5.3 Party experts -- 5.3.1 Early uses of party experts -- 5.3.2 The developing complexity of inferential questions -- 5.3.3 Increasing reliance on party expert evidence -- 5.3.3.1 The growth of specialist occupations and professions -- 5.3.3.2 The need for specialist advice -- 5.3.4 Developments in the criminal courts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- 5.3.5 The problem of party expert disagreement -- 5.4 Special juries -- 5.5 Assessors -- 5.5.1 The rise of the Trinity Masters -- 5.5.2 From Trinity Masters to assessors -- 5.6 Court experts -- 5.6.1 Before the nineteenth century -- 5.6.2 Nineteenth-century innovation -- 5.6.3 Twentieth-century disinterest -- 5.7 The Ultimate Issue Rule -- 5.7.1 The rule's nineteenth-century rise -- 5.7.2 The rule's twentieth-century decline -- 5.8 Conclusion -- 6 Assessing expert evidence in the English civil courts today -- 6.1 Introduction -- 6.2 Party experts -- 6.2.1 Selecting party experts -- 6.2.1.1 Deciding between party and single joint experts -- 6.2.1.2 The number of party experts -- 6.2.2 Producing full pleadings -- 6.2.3 Challenging expert opinion -- 6.2.3.1 Before trial -- 6.2.3.2 At trial -- 6.2.4 Delegating fact finding -- 6.3 Single joint experts -- 6.3.1 Selecting single joint experts -- 6.3.2 Producing full pleadings -- 6.3.3 Challenging expert opinion -- 6.3.4 Delegating fact finding -- 6.4 Assessors -- 6.4.1 Selecting assessors -- 6.4.1.1 What is the role of an assessor? -- 6.4.1.2 Approaches to appointment -- 6.4.2 Producing full pleadings -- 6.4.3 Challenging expert opinion -- 6.4.3.1 Challenging the assessor's opinion -- 6.4.3.2 Assessor retiring with the court -- 6.4.4 Delegating fact finding -- 6.5 Conclusion.

7 The effective management of bias -- 7.1 Introduction -- 7.2 The use of single experts -- 7.3 The presumptive recusal of an expert for bias -- 7.4 The inadmissibility of unreliable expert evidence -- 7.5 Exhortations to an overriding duty to the court -- 7.5.1 The nature of the overriding duty -- 7.5.2 The nature of the overridden obligations -- 7.6 The reform of litigation privilege -- 7.7 Criminal, civil and professional sanctions -- 7.7.1 Criminal sanctions -- 7.7.1.1 Perjury -- 7.7.1.2 Perverting the course of justice -- 7.7.2 Civil sanctions -- 7.7.3 Disciplinary sanctions -- 7.7.3.1 Professional misconduct -- 7.7.3.2 Expert regulation -- 7.8 Conclusion -- CONCLUSION -- 1 Specialist knowledge and non-specialist courts -- 2 Arranging legal processes to best support accurate fact determination -- 3 The foundational norms of evidence law -- Appendix 1 Part 35 of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 -- 35.1 Duty to restrict expert evidence -- 35.2 Interpretation -- 35.3 Experts - overriding duty to the court -- 35.4 Court's power to restrict expert evidence -- 35.5 General requirement for expert evidence to be given in a written report -- 35.6 Written questions to experts -- 35.7 Court's power to direct that evidence is to be given by a single joint expert -- 35.8 Instructions to a single joint expert -- 35.9 Power of court to direct a party to provide information -- 35.10 Contents of report -- 35.11 Use by one party of expert's report disclosed by another -- 35.12 Discussions between experts -- 35.13 Consequence of failure to disclose expert's report -- 35.14 Expert's right to ask court for directions -- 35.15 Assessors -- Appendix 2 Tables of pre-1800 civil cases involving expert evidence -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX.