The factors affecting the appointment of experts by state trial judges: An exploratory study

State level judges make evidentiary decisions in the adversarial process affecting' the lives of many people in many types of cases. This adversarial atmosphere is conducive to application of Jasanoff's social construction and deconstruction theories of scientific expert testimony. However, Gatowski, Dobbin, Richardson, Ginsburg, Merlino, and Dahir (2001) indicate judges themselves may lack the necessary knowledge to evaluate this evidence.; Court-appointed experts may create the more accurate social construction of scientific evidence. Prior to the instant research, the only other published surveys addressing the use of court-appointed experts included one performed on the federal judiciary's practices by Cecil and Willging (1994) and a limited one regarding family court cases only in Texas by Champagne, Easterling, Shuman, Tomkins, and Whitaker (2001).; The research reported herein assessed how state trial judges use their authority to appoint experts and identified factors involved in their appointing experts. Four hundred trial judges from four states were surveyed by mail. An equal number of judges were selected per state. Dillman's "Total Design Method," was utilized as has been done for populations perceived difficult to survey, such as the judiciary (Dobbin, Gatowski, Ginsburg, Merlino, Dahir, & Richardson (2001).; The present research suggests that judges consider not only applying the Daubert trilogy guidelines, but also the impact to the parties and to their jurisdictions of using court-appointed experts. This suggests that the gatekeeping role contributes to a social construction wherein science is created in the courtroom not only from the evidence, but also from the circumstances of these appointments. Judges also consider the cost to the parties or the jurisdiction. Data also included the impact on settlement and on the perception of procedural justice by the parties. Data revealed differences in the frequency of these appointments in various types of cases, such as family court cases, which occurred more than in the combined caseloads of criminal and civil cases. When criminal and civil caseload appointments were compared, criminal case appointments occurred more frequently. Other factors were identified, but were not found to be statistically significant.