Check Your Crystal Ball at the Courthouse Door, Please: Exploring the Past, Understanding the Present, and Worrying About the Future of Scientific Evidence

Since the earliest days of the use of expert witnesses, judges (and more recently legislatures) have struggled to design the juridical intersection where law and science cross paths. The effort has not met with notable success. This situation could be changing, however. Last term, in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the Supreme Court adopted a novel approach to the age-old problem of scientific evidence.

The -Court determined that the Federal Rules of Evidence require scientific evidence to be scientifically valid before it enters the courtroom. The Court has served notice that experts should trade in their crystal balls for electron microscopes. But the success of this move into the twentieth century largely depends on the law's proper understanding of the crossroads at which law and science meet. Becoming scientifically literate should prove to be a continuing challenge to the law.