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Impartial Scientists In The Court Systems
jimmyUCB writes: "It looks like the American justice system may not be utterly doomed after all. This article from Science Daily says that the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is paying scientists and engineers to be impartial tech tutors to judges so they don't have to listen to biased experts that are paid by defendants/plaintiffs. "
Under cross-examination, the lawyers might ask questions that the judge hadn't thought of. It wouldn't invalidate the questions of the judge, but it would simply offer both sides the opportunity to put their own questions to the court appointed expert.
As was mentioned in the release -- Judges (federal judges, at least) have had the right to appoint their own experts since 1993
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Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
This is a damn fine idea, but it sure would have been nice to have the judge Kaplan in the DeCSS case. He was so brainwashed by the MPAA, he couldn't have found his ass with both hands, a flashlight and a GPS.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
How impartial is impartial?
Would the AAAS not be considered to be biased in some states/districts, for example if there were to be a "rights to not be taught evolution" case?
I'm not saying AAAS bods wouldn't be "right" in this case, I'm just saying that they are able to color the situation with their own views as much as anyone else, and hence would not be impartial to the case in hand.
FatPhil
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Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
I'm amazed (and alarmed) that the courts ever started taking the testimony of paid witnesses to begin with. How can you believe the word of anyone who is being paid by one side in a dispute? (Let alone someone who makes their living that way, as many do.)
If scientists or other specialists do in fact have expert knowledge that is needed for the resolution of a case, let the courts serve them a subpoena -- just like they do for real witnesses.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The AMA is a good example of an "impartial" scientific organization. But they themselves have a lot of connections with big industry. If you were an individual or a small company with a case against a large medical corporation, would you want put all your faith in an "unbiased" expert witness whose motives may not be completely unbiased?
The notion of using a special master to advise judges on particular technical or legal issues is hardly new. There is substantial case law suggesting that the appointment of a special master is within the sound discretion of the court (which means that the appointment, even over the objection of the parties, is reviewed solely for abuse of discretion).
Still the exercise of discretion generally requires the judge to consider the concerns of the parties. Just because AALS says an expert is unbiased, that representation would be unlikely to suffice. Further, even where there is a special master, each side is likely to produce its own experts, whose credentials and expertise may well impress the factfinder more than the remarks of the special master. The master serves as an aide to, and does not supplant, the judge, in any case.
Astute observers will note that a special master, Lessig, was appointed to advise the judge in U.S. v. Microsoft, although that particular appointment was something of a cause celebre.
The issues surrounding scientific evidence have been getting heightened attention for at least ten years in the courts. There are a number of other instances of courts using independent experts to try to get a grip on the scientific truth of a case. In a recent biotech patent case, the judge picked from a list of scientists agreed upon by the parties to get someone to act as a background resource. A panel of court-appointed experts was used in the silicone breast implant litigation.
I expect that the AAAS lists won't be used by judges without input from the parties, just because the parties are the ones who have stuff on the line in the case.
I think that the AAAS's move is a positive one. I would like to think that other scientific, medical, and engineering societies could follow suit. Such lists would help in one significant way -- identifying which experts are willing to work on court cases or not.
This move by the AAAS was made a couple of years ago in response to Supreme Court cases that changed the standards for the acceptance of scientific testimony. Among scientists, the Supreme Court actually has a very high reputation, perhaps in part because of the seriousness that the Court has approached issues relating to scientific evidence.
One thing that will limit the use of such experts by the courts may well be money. Courts do not have a lot of funding to pay for experts. Courts might try ordering the parties to split the cost, but that is not always fair to a little guy who is having a hard enough time getting by in the litigation.
I hope judges will make more use of independent experts, especially in cases like the breast implant case, where large numbers of people's rights regarding their health are potentially dependent on expert opinion. It is more important to get a case right when a million people have a stake than just one.
For example there are many social theories that have not had any solid scientific proof except in the harse world of politics. And even there it would be questionable. One example of this would be marxism, which since most of those systems have fallen, can be said to be a flawed system. This can hardly be taken as scientific proof.
Another example is in the field of mental health where despite billions of dollars of goverment funding, we hardly have a better society because of it. In fact, there have been dozens if not hundreds of schools of mental practice since WWII, but not much in terms of real social advance. The things touted as major advances often lead to things like Hellmouth. And there is not much that could stand up to the standards of proof demanded by hard Science. Referances include respected people such as Thomas Sasz(?) and others.
The real problem is when the hard or soft science is biased because of political agendas, which is what this program is supposed to counteract. I think that there will be some commontion caused by all of this.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
True scientists aren't biased...
Hoo hoo! Ha ha! Hee hee! That's a good one! That statement is incorrect in so many ways that it boggles the mind. How about:
Scientists are by definition human (on Earth anyway) and so are biased, by definition. The perfect human has not yet been invented. :-)
In practice, it is actually much worse than that, given that modern science can be very political in the quest for funding dollars and research grants.
The people who are most knowledgeable about a given scientific subject have much at stake (professional reputation, the aforementioned research dollars) in propounding or repudiating a particular view on that subject. It's possible that the most knowledgable person may be the least objective, especially in a confrontational legal setting where their own work may be called into question.
I could go on, but I think I've made the point...
But, as the article clearly states:
As long as they have that right, it makes sense to give them an opportunity to take good advantage of it by finding competent scientific advisors- which is all that the system does. Nobody is forcing the justice system to bring them in, either, so the judge will only call one in when he thinks that it's warranted. Besides, it's not as though the judges and juries have to take the scientists' words as gospel just because they're not being hired by one side or the other. They'll still be required to judge the scientists' opinions and credibility the same way that they would any other witness. If the scientist has an obvious bias, his testimony can be discounted the same way that any other biased witness's testimony would be discounted.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
OTOH, most court cases aren't going to involve extremely contentious issues that are hot ongoing research topics. Instead they're going to pit one side that actually has the weight of generally accepted scientific though behind it and one side that's dug up the one scientist in a thousand who has a wacked out alternate theory. The problem is that the average judge or juror isn't going to be able to tell the two apart based only on the testimony of the two sides' witnesses. Each of them is going to present himself as the more reliable party and without an unbiased third party to help decide the issue it's likely to be a tossup. Heck, in many cases it's worse than that because the guy supporting the wacko view is a professional witness who has lots of experience convincing juries while the guy supporting the real science is a practicing scientist who's only used to talking to other scientists.
Actually, in some cases it's worse than that. My boss was an expert witness in the OJ civil trial, testifying about the mass spectrometry evidence of EDTA contamination in the blood samples. I can't see how any practicing scientist could possibly have concluded that the samples were contaminated based on the evidence they had (the alleged EDTA was a background peak, while it should have stood out like a sore thumb) but the defense dug up somebody who was willing to testify that they were. I'm sure that money changing hands had a lot to do with it. A third scientist who reached his conclusion based on the evidence instead of how much money was going into his research budget (my boss at least took his fee as a donation to his research, not for his personal use) would have been much more reliable.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
It doesn't say much more than the Science Daily article, but it has a whole slew of interesting-looking links on it.
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Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The judicial system protects those of us interested in liberty from those of us who aren't who seem to often make their way into the legislative and executive branches. A woman's Right to Choose would not exist if the Supreme Court weren't there to protect it. Why? There are lots of stupid, vocal Southern social conservatives in Congress. These people, who are as far from Libertarian as you can imagine, want things like creationism taught in schools and they want to return women to the kitchen and the bedroom.
You do people on both sides of an important issue a great disservice when you attempt to misrepresent an important issue like abortion.
You will find the great majority of people interested in ending abortion motivated by the constitution, to which the right to not be killed is fundamental.
You will find the great majority of people interested in maintaining the rights to abortion motivated by the desire for a woman to be able to live her life as she desires.
The real question here has to be to determine at which point a life actually begins, and at which point an individual is protected by the constitution. It is an important question, and one that can be tricky to answer when the stakes are so high.
But taking the views of an extremely small and vocal minority, and trying to paint about 50% of the population with that brush, only serves to divide and inflame people while demonstrating your ignorance.
Sorry if this sounds a little harsh... but I think this is too important an issue to be trivialized and misrepresented, no matter which side you are on.
Bill
(eliminating my +1 bonus because this is way off topic)...
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
...that the judges didn't choose the Fox Networks "scientific correspondents"
I've been with companies that have been involved in court before over technical issues, and it's not pretty! Because when it comes to matters of technical intellectual property, most people even in the field would have difficulty deciding which way to go, and that's when they can understand the arguments...
I think what we need is to ensure that for tech cases that the judge is technically qualified, otherwise it all comes down to whichever side can put foward the slickest presentation of why they are "right". That's exactly what happened to one company I worked for, and it caused them to go bankrupt in the end.
But perhaps we need to take it further and ensure that in all cases juries are at least familiar with technical issues. Foresnic evidence and statistical analysis of such is now an important part of many criminal investigations, and there are numerous studies showing how unreliable witeness evidence is. But most people just blindly accept eyewitness accounts, which has led to any number of miscarraiges of justice.
I think we need to ensure that people serving in the jury have a minimum of education to ensure that they can weight the evidence in a rational manner. This would ensure that the facts are the most important part of the case, rather than the words of a fancy lawyer. In the end, this can only led more a more just court system.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Common law adjudication, though it moves glacially at times, tends to adapt quite well and to yield just results in the end. While it took five or ten years to fully sort out the patent-like protections earlier courts gave to Copyrights, resulting in the very balanced and "almost-right" (Altai) measures of infringement used today, the Courts did that entirely on their own, with only an eighteen month period where anyone took "look and feel" Copyright claims seriously.
The latest string of cases result almost entirely from Congressional meddling in the general purpose acts. Regrettably, in overreaction to the suggestion that these "old laws are too out of date to work today," statutes like the NET act and the DMCA have modified Copyright law to become computer law -- and unsurprisingly a computer law that favors only the most powerful content-holders.
The law *IS* horribly unbalanced now that these laws have been passed. And virtually every time the Congress has considered the matter, things got worse. We were far better off letting the process work in its course through the slower, yet surer, vehicle of the common law.
But does it work? And do most people think its even supposed to?
Let me ask you a question : If you have a defense lawyer, assigned his clients at random, and he wins every single case - never even plea bargins, just always wins an aquital - is he a good lawyer? Most people I've asked this question say yes imediately. Most are confused on how there could be any question. But if you look at real adversarial truth processes, its different.
If you had a professor assigned to thesis jurys that in every case he was there the thesis defense failed - no one ever got their thesis with him on the jury asking questions - would he be a good jury member? If you had a Defender of the Faith (formerly known as the Devil's Advocate) who presents an adversarial point of view when cannonizing saints, and not one person is made a saint during his tenure, is he a good defender of the faith? In these cases, most would say no - the point of the system is to weed out those truely unworthy, not to stage gladitorial fights between champions and praise the one that always wins. But we are saying the opposite when we praise a lawyer that always wins.
In theory, the adversarial justice system is there to find the truth. In practice, it seems to work to determine the truth. It's trial by combat - if Lancelot prevails, the queen's honor is intact, and the facts be damned. The idea that Lancelot would take a dive to make sure that the truth of combat occasionaly matches the facts is sacrilige.
Do I have a better solution? Incremental reforms perhaps, and having impartial scientific testimony is a great start, but it doesn't do to have no defense, unless you've finally bioengeneered a true philosopher-king. In the real world, we're likely stuck with the adversarial system, but that doesn't mean that we have to ignore its flaws, and the fact that it often isn't even trying to "get at the truth" is a pretty big one.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
You raise a good point. Furthermore, the whole premise of the American judicial system is that that the adversary system is the best way to get at the truth. Both sides throw up their best arguments and the fact-finder decides who is right.
As a quite young man sits at the defendent's table waiting for the trial to begin, a representative from the AAAS hurriedly pushes past the flock of reporters to bring in their appointed expert witness.
/\r3 1337!!!!!
Judge: Is this our expert witness?
AAAS: It is, your honor.
Judge: Please approach the bench, and state your name, for the court's records.
Expert Witness: 1 0w(\)z Jo0! (v)y Hax0r 5Ty]_3z
Judge: Umm... court reporter, did you, uh, did you get that?... Court Reporter?
Court Reporter: (looking at stenographic machine) Umm.... I don't think I have a "]_" on this thing. You know what? I'll just use a pen.
Check out my diary.
In a true libertarian government, the judicial system would only have the ability to sentance[sic] people accused of crimes
I think I prefer our system where the judicial system first tries the case, then if found guilty, sentences crime committers.
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