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The psychiatric expert in court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Anthony Kenny
Anthony Kenny*
Affiliation:
Balliol College, Oxford
*
*Address for correspondence: Dr Anthony Kenny, Balliol College, Oxford 0X1 3BJ.
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Synopsis

The law about expert evidence is unsatisfactory: it gives scope for the expert to usurp the role of judge, jury and parliament; it brings the professions of the experts into disrepute; and it sets juries the impossible task of sorting pseudo sciences from genuine ones. The law should be reformed by changing statutes which force expert witnesses to testify beyond their science, by taking the provision of expert evidence out of the adversarial context, and by removing from the courts the decision whether a nascent discipline is or is not a science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , May 1984 , pp. 291 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

Notes

1 [1975] Q.B. 834, 841.

2 Folkes v. Chadd (1782) 3 Doug. 157.

3 R. v. Siherlock [1894], 2 Q.B. 766.

4 Ramsay v. Watson (1961) 108 C.L.R. 642.

5 Anderson v. The Queen [1972] A.C. 100.

6 English Exporters (London) Ltd. v. Eldonwall Ltd. [1973] Ch. 415.

7 [1894], 2 Q.B. 766.

8 R. v. Crouch (1850) 11 Cox C.C. 546.

9 English Exporters (London) Ltd. v. Eldonwall Ltd. [1973] Ch. 415.

10 [1974] A.C. 85.

11 Kenny, Anthony (1978). The Aristotelian Ethics. Oxford University Press: Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Kenny, Anthony (1982). The Computation of Style. Pergamon Press: Oxford.Google Scholar

13 Morton, A. Q. (1980). Literary Detection, p. 204. Hodder & Stoughton: London.Google Scholar

14 ibid. p. 208.

15 22 April 1977.

16 s. 4 (2).

17 [1968] 1 Q.B. 159.

18 ibid. p. 164.

19 For example, R. v. Byrne [1960] 2 Q.B. 396, 404, per Lord Parker C.J.

20 Report of the Committee on Mentally Abnormal Offenders, Cmnd. 6244 (1975), Ch. 18.

21 (1955) 99 C.L.R. 111, 119, per Dixon C.J., Kitto and Taylor J.J.

22 [1975] Q.B. 834, 841.

23 ibid.

24 [1974] A.C. 85.

25 [1975] Q.B. p. 842.