Author Description

The Trial of the Experts is both a textbook of the rules of expert evidence and a timely analysis of the difficulties experienced when experts from non-legal disciplines are called as witnesses. The author deals with the difficulties besetting judges and juries by unreliable, esotreric, conflicting, and biased evidence. He examines the contribution made to the legal process by physchologists, phychiatrists an other members of the health care professions. The author also examines the issues presented by the emergence of a welter of new scientific disciplines, and analyses how the forensic expert's duties to maintain the confidentiality of communication made in the course of professional relationships may conflict with the courts' need for all relevant and probative evidence. This is a provocative and informative work that provides, for the first time outside the United States, a comprehensive statement of the law of expert evidence as evolved by courts and legislation.