Opinion Evidence Rule Research

Opinion evidence rules is an important rule in Anglo-American legal system, it is used to regulate the witness’s testimony. Opinion evidence is divided into two parts: opinion evidence of lay witness and expert witness (or called the opinions of appraiser).Our country is a country deeply influenced by continental legal system, and hasn’t set up a rule to regulate opinion evidence. In order to accurately determine the case facts, avoid the judge’s too many subjective judgments, and limit the judge’s huge evidence discretion in our country, it is necessary to learn from the experience of the common law countries to establish opinion evidence rules suitable to our country to make the judge determine the case objectively and impartially. The author of this paper will analyze the dissertation into four part in order to establish the rules in our country.The first part, the author will briefly explain the meaning and characteristics of opinion evidence and its development and legislation at present.The second part and the third part, the author will respectively introduce the meaning of lay witness and expert witness, the opinion evidence in common law and civil law countries and its feasible analysis.Finally, the author introduces the present situation of our country opinion evidence rules and the necessity and feasibility to establish China’s opinion evidence rules. In reference to the related experiences in legislation of common law and civil law countries, the author puts forward the views of the establishing opinion evidence rules for our country.