Witnessing expertise: A mixed-methods analysis of legal determinations of expert authority in United States District Courts

This dissertation provides a sociological analysis of an event not typically associated with social forces, namely, the allocation of expert authority. Conventionally, expert authority is thought to depend on internal qualities of knowledge. However, I argue that intellectual differences only partly explain boundaries between expert and non-expert, and that social factors shape individuals' access to expert authority in ways that reflect and reinforce wider cultural frameworks. I test this proposition with a mixed-methods investigation of how courts make decisions about who is and is not an expert. I conduct a qualitative content analysis of judicial decisions to admit and exclude expert witnesses from patent infringement, discrimination, and medical malpractice lawsuits in United States District Courts (n=574). I also analyze quantified data from the content analysis and other information I compiled on expert witnesses' demographic, educational, and occupational backgrounds. I first investigate how witnesses frame their expert claims to non-experts. I find that some kinds of testimony are more likely than others to be admitted into courts. However, expert testimony is also associated with a range of differences among individuals, suggesting that expert designations are associated with underlying social preferences. Next, I examine lawyers' attempts to exclude opposing experts from court. I find that attorneys' strategies for attacking expert witnesses are consistent with widely-held cultural beliefs about expertise. For example, lawyers' admissibility challenges are significantly associated with experts' gender, educational credentials, and occupational contexts. Finally, I analyze judges' admissibility decisions and their reasons for granting and denying expert status, which also show evidence of hidden social biases. Again, expert characteristics have significant associations with admissibility decisions, even after controlling for expert testimony. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates that legal decisions about expertise are associated with social factors that are not identified by law but that are predicted by sociological theory. I discuss the implications these findings in a concluding chapter, and argue that negotiations of cultural authority such as expert admissibility contests provide strategic research sites to observe broader patterns of social stratification and inequality.