The Ethics of Expert Evidence

The articles selected for this volume represent the best of the research conducted at the intersection of law, professional ethics and expert evidence. The collection incorporates legal perspectives from a wide range of jurisdictions, peer-reviewed literature drawn from expert disciplines, and critical law and society scholarship. It offers a corrective to the tendency to quarantine discussions of the ethics of expert testimony by jurisdiction, legal field, or area of expertise. The authors challenge preconceived notions of ethical performance, offer ideas for improvement, document failures to learn from and successes to emulate. The introduction identifies common themes and illuminating differences within the multidisciplinary scholarship on the ethics of expert testimony. It also delineates the multidimensional conceptions of ethics that drive this scholarship. Placing these essays side by side illustrates that the essential elements of ethical performance are now well understood. As ever, lively debates persist and are reflected within the essays selected. Nonetheless, this collection demonstrates that the major question that remains is whether legal systems and expert communities - institutions that sometimes resist change - can find the will to implement what has been learned from decades of careful, multi-disciplinary research.

Emma Cunliffe is an Associate Professor in the Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, Canada and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the School of Law, University of New South Wales.