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Expert Bioethics Testimony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Stephen R. Latham
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Extract

The question of whether the normative testimony of ethics experts should be admissible under the rules of evidence has been the subject of much debate. Professor Imwinkelried's paper is an effort to get us, for a moment, to change that subject. He seeks to turn our attention, instead, to a means by which bioethics experts’ normative analyses might come before the court without regard to the rules of evidence - a means lying formally outside those rules’ jurisdiction. The court, he argues, may freely consider evidence from expert bioethicists so long as it is performing a legislative rather than an adjudicative function. The rules of evidence apply to the court's efforts to find the facts of a particular case, Imwinkelried argues, but they do not constrain the court's investigations relative to its creative law-making efforts.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , Summer 2005 , pp. 242 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2005

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References

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