Doubting Daubert

Abstract:     
In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the Supreme Court announced that it was liberalizing the rules on admissibility of expert scientific evidence by rejecting a requirement that such evidence be generally accepted in the scientific community. "Daubert" has had just the opposite effect from the one the Court said it intended: it has narrowed rather than enlarged the range of expert evidence admitted by courts, and it has ushered in a whole suit of unscientific legal rulings in the process. Proposals to extend "Daubert" to the administrative setting should be rejected, and the courts should pull back from "Daubert" itself.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 19

Keywords: Daubert, torts, environmental law, administrative law, rules of evidence, expert evidence, scientific method, junk science

JEL Classification: D82, K33, K14

Accepted Paper Series