Biedermann Alex, Kotsoglou Kyriakos N
School of Criminal Justice, Faculty of Law, Criminal Justice and Public Administration, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Litigation Law Unit, University of Adelaide Law School, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
Front Psychol. 2018 Oct 31;9:2073. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02073. eCollection 2018.
The relationship between forensic science and legal adjudication is intricate mainly because the need to inform fact-finders on issues going beyond the layman's knowledge poses challenges both on empirical and normative dimensions, in particular with regards to the specific role and duties of the different participants in the legal process. While rationality is widely upheld as one of the aspirations of the legal process across many modern jurisdictions, a pending question is how to remedy the uneasy relationship between general propositions (and knowledge claims) conditioning expert witness testimony, and individualized decisions taken by fact-finders. The focus has hitherto been put on the utilization of model-based and formal methods of reasoning while, regrettably, the concepts of judgment and decision-making have not received equal attention. A first aspiration of our paper will thus be to further clarify the nature of this systemic relationship in the particular area of the legal process involving scientific experts, by conducting a critical transversal analysis of current empirical, normative and doctrinal understandings of expert witness testimony. As a second aim, we will use this insight to argue in favor of the view that structural features of expert witness testimony are embedded in a decision-making process, and that the understanding of this decisional dimension is important for clarifying the respective roles of expert witnesses and fact-finders, and for favoring their mutual understanding thereof. To substantiate this perspective, and attest to its growing recognition as a frontier understanding, we will provide real-world examples from forensic science reporting practice and policy documents of professional bodies.
法医学与法律裁决之间的关系错综复杂，主要是因为在向事实认定者提供超出外行知识范围的问题信息时，在实证和规范层面都面临挑战，尤其是在法律程序中不同参与者的具体角色和职责方面。虽然合理性在许多现代司法管辖区被广泛视为法律程序的目标之一，但一个悬而未决的问题是，如何弥补作为专家证人证言基础的一般命题（和知识主张）与事实认定者做出的个别化决定之间的紧张关系。迄今为止，重点一直放在基于模型和形式推理方法的运用上，然而遗憾的是，判断和决策的概念并未得到同等关注。因此，本文的首要目标将是，通过对当前关于专家证人证言的实证、规范和理论理解进行批判性的横向分析，进一步厘清在涉及科学专家的法律程序这一特定领域中这种系统关系的性质。作为第二个目标，我们将利用这一见解来支持这样一种观点，即专家证人证言的结构特征嵌入在一个决策过程中，并且理解这一决策维度对于厘清专家证人和事实认定者各自的角色以及促进他们之间的相互理解很重要。为了证实这一观点，并证明其作为前沿理解正日益得到认可，我们将提供来自法医学报告实践和专业机构政策文件的实际例子。
