ABSTRACT
No one will deny that the law should in some way effectively use expert knowledge wherever it will aid in settling disputes. The only question is as to how it can do so best. In early times, and before trial by jury was much developed, there seem to have been two modes of using what expert knowledge there was: first, to select as jurymen such persons as were by experience especially fitted to know the class of facts which were before them, and second, to call to the aid of the court skilled persons whose opinion it might adopt or not as it pleased. Both these methods exist at least theoretically at the present day, though each has practically given place to the third and much more recent method of calling before the jury skilled persons as witnesses. No doubt, there are good historical reasons why this third method has survived, but they by no means justify its continued existence, and it is, as I conceive, in fact an anomaly fertile of much practical inconvenience.
