ABSTRACT
A wealthier party can make the cost of suit too high for the opponent. Adopting the normal approach to expert testimony would exacerbate this problem by tending to make cases involving expertise more protracted. In addition to expressing a conclusion about general acceptance, federal trial judges will include what will become an equally mechanical statement that the expertise will be helpful to decision. Trial judges will thus continue to look for a justification to defer to expertise, and they will continue to find it in the general acceptance of that expertise in generally accepted bodies of knowledge. Contrary to conventional beliefs about legal decision making, juridical decision makers, judge or jury, are almost exclusively self-informing. Juridical decision makers come to trial with a vast storehouse of knowledge, beliefs, and modes of reasoning that are necessary to permit communication to occur simply and efficiently.
