ABSTRACT
Traditionally, discussion of the admissibility of expert evidence has centred on a number of so called ‘rules’: the expertise rule, the basis rule, the area of expertise rule, the ultimate issue rule and the common knowledge rule. In the authors’ view, this analysis of current law – both the common law and especially the uniform evidence legislation – is highly artificial and misleading. Instead, this text’s approach is to regard those rules in a more flexible way as aspects of either the operation of the expertise exception to the opinion rule (addressed last chapter) or the trial judge’s discretion to exclude prejudicial evidence (discussed in this chapter).
