The Rules Of Admissibility Of Expert Evidence

With the rapid development of science and technology, it has raised increasingchallenges to testimony admissibility. Judges need experts’ help to tell right from wrong incases involving environment contamination, medical disputes or drug infringement and soon. Experts’ opinions are crucial in identifying the root cause, suspect’s identity anddefining the liability. We are in the middle of the judicial reform where evidence regulationhas always been an important part. As a result, the reform of identification system isinevitable. Our judicial identification system reform is referring to those of civil lawcountries，since the expert evidence systems in common law countries, especially in theUnited States, are more mature through a century’s test.It is a scientific problem whether expert evidence itself is scientifically acceptable. Asmore scientific technologies are applied in cases, judging true science from false hasbecome a legal issue. In this thesis, rules of expert evidence admissibility will be studiedwith heritage and adjustment through time, foundation of rules and practical cases. Whencombining them with our existing judicial identification regulation, the thesis intends toshed some lights on building specific expert opinion admissibility regulation system. Thethesis is comprised of four parts. First part is brief introduction of United States’ expertopinion admissibility, discussing the heritage and reform of its historical systems andfuture prospects. The second part shares the factors that influence the expert opinionadmissibility, namely relativity, usefulness and qualification. The third part analyses theproblems existing in current judicial expert opinion admissibility in China. By comparingwith the US system on issues like formality and lack of standard consensus, this part raisesthe meaning of learning from US expert opinion admissibility. The fourth part includes aspecific idea of China’s judicial expert opinion admissibility, which is an integrated systemfrom legality, correlation to reliable rules perspective.