Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Social Construction of the Admissibility of Expert Testimony after Daubert v. Merrell Dow, Inc.

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Specialists who are qualified as experts on a subject relevant to a trial often are called upon to offer scientific opinions relevant to that lawsuit or case. Expert witnesses, attorneys, and judges all participate in a process in which some of those opinions become redefined as evidence that will be helpful to the judge or jury. In an adversarial setting such as a courtroom, how does this movement of expert testimony from the status of "science" to "legal science" take place, particularly when the participants often differ in knowledge, skill, and motivation? The primary purpose of this research is to examine negotiated movement in the courtroom process by applying the tenets of the sociology of science, as theorized by Sheila Jasanoff, to the construction of the admissibility of expert testimony, in order to investigate how the construction and deconstruction of expert testimony shapes "legal science." Jasanoff argued that understanding the sociology of science will benefit judges and attorneys by alerting them to the shortcomings of the adversary system as a way of understanding science, by providing them with a more principled basis for evaluating expert testimony, and by presenting a clearer accounting of what occurs when courts engage in scientific fact finding. To date, Jasanoff's ideas have not been studied empirically. This research will test Jasanoff's theory by examining the social construction of the admissibility of expert testimony. A sample of Federal district court cases published on the Lexis/Nexis online database following the 1993 U.S. Supreme Court decision Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 1993) will be content analyzed to investigate the impact of Daubert and its progeny on scientific "fact." The broader impacts of this research include the following: The methodology developed in this research will be of value to other researchers in science and law by providing a technique and classification scheme for future studies in this area. This research has implications not only for disciplines in which these issues are studied, such as sociology, social psychology, and communications, but also for scientists from many diverse disciplines who provide expert testimony to the courts and policy makers, judges and attorneys who argue and decide the use of such testimony, and legal educators who must prepare future attorneys and judges to meet the challenges posed by expert testimony in the courtroom.