The Interested Expert Problem and the Epistemology of Juries

The existence of experts raises a host of interesting questions in social, legal, and political epistemology. This article introduces and discusses interested experts – people who are experts on some topic, but who also have a distinct set of values and preferences regarding that topic, so that they are not well-described as “disinterested” parties. Interested experts raise several distinct problems in social, legal, and political epistemology. Some general questions arise: can we rationally or justifiably form beliefs relying on interested expert testimony? Do they constitute knowledge? Under what circumstances? This article focuses on a specific question in legal epistemology: should interested experts be allowed to serve on juries and, if so, should it be permissible for lawyers to strike them from the pool of potential jurors? My hope is that concentrating on this question will provide insight into the more general questions concerning the epistemology of testimony with respect to interested experts, while also providing concrete recommendations for jury reform to improve the epistemic performance of juries.

SENSITIVITY, SAFETY, AND THE LAW: A REPLY TO PARDO

ABSTRACTIn a recent paper, Michael Pardo argues that the epistemic property that is legally relevant is the one called Safety, rather than Sensitivity. In the process, he argues against our Sensitivity-related account of statistical evidence. Here we revisit these issues, partly in order to respond to Pardo, and partly in order to make general claims about legal epistemology. We clarify our account, we show how it adequately deals with counterexamples and other worries, we raise suspicions about Safety's value here, and we revisit our general skepticism about the role that epistemological considerations should play in determining legal policy.

Nilai Keadilan dalam Sistem Kewarisan Islam

In the context of inheritance, reform efforts by contemporary Muslim thinkers have so far not been able to significantly change the shadow of classical inheritance law in Islam. This condition is caused by the effect of the mindset of the society in their epistemology, which assumes that the distribution of inheritance must be equal. Of course, we cannot blame the public for their knowledge of Islamic inheritance law. The question that arises is why they are in a hurry to accept the equal distribution of inheritance without conducting a study based on Islamic law on inheritance. Thus, the biggest challenge for Islamic scholars and inheritance law experts today is how to find a comprehensive formulation of various theories of knowledge that can be accepted by everyone, so that Islamic inheritance law is not only a discourse, but is able to totally reflect a concrete concept. This paper seeks to reorient and rethink the inheritance law in the development of Islamic legal epistemology which is examined in conjunction with the Shari’a provisions, which contain the values of justice in terms of theology, economics, and social.

Legal Epistemology

Legal practice is up to its neck in epistemology. Legal practice involves proof, evidence, doubt, testimony, arguments, witnesses, experts, and so on. The epistemology of legal practice, often referred to as legal epistemology, examines epistemological questions raised by legal practice. It can also apply legal insights to illuminating perennial epistemological problems. Legal epistemology investigates whether standards of proof, such as “beyond reasonable doubt” or “preponderance of evidence,” are best understood as credences, statistical likelihoods, or as qualitative standards. It asks what, if anything, legitimates these standards and in what ways legal standards of proof should be sensitive to practical factors. Legal epistemology examines when and why evidence has a probative value; that is, it investigates how evidence makes a litigated claim more likely. It illuminates what reasons—moral, political, economic, practical, epistemic—justify excluding probative evidence. It questions whether particular kinds of evidence are apt to mislead factfinders. Perhaps some kinds of character evidence, for example, are prejudicial. Legal epistemology asks whether particular aspects of evidence law contribute to epistemic injustice, including hermeneutical injustice, and illuminates sources of legal injustice. It investigates the normativity of profiling. Legal epistemology questions the epistemic and legal values of epistemic properties such as safety, sensitivity, reliability, coherence, intelligibility, knowledge, justification, explanation, narrative structure, epistemic virtue, and truth. Legal epistemology asks whether and how juries and judges can form collective beliefs; it examines features of effective deliberation and judgment aggregation, and studies the effect of disagreement and dissent on legal judgments. Legal phenomena such as expert testimony raise distinctive epistemological questions, such as how to adjudicate and manage expertise in the courtroom. Legal epistemology studies the legal posit of reasonableness, which arises in the reasonable person standard, reasonable doubt standard, and various other areas of legal practice. Legal epistemology can also illuminate the role of knowledge and ignorance in culpability: How should we understand the epistemic criteria for recklessness and negligence, for example, and what precisely is mens rea? Law varies by jurisdiction; different legal systems create and resolve epistemological challenges in different ways. This is evident in topics such as the admissibility of character evidence or hearsay evidence, the permissibility of inferences from silence, or the exclusion of improperly obtained evidence. Legal epistemology is deeply interdisciplinary. In addition to law and philosophy, it involves research in psychology, forensic science, sociology, anthropology, criminology, history, theology, politics, economics (particularly behavioral economics), artificial intelligence, computing, and statistics.