Abstract

When judges and juries hear from expert witnesses, what exactly do they expect to hear? In other words, as an audience what purpose do they have for the communication? Just what rhetorical burden is the expert expected to bear? The theme of our paper is that the Frye and Daubert rules that dominate legal argument about the use of expert witnesses are both flawed. Neither shows adequate respect either for what Billig calls "the argumentative aspect of social life" or the inescapable hermeneutic and perspectival problems highlighted by the rhetoric-of-the-human-sciences movement.