ABSTRACT
Expert evidence has featured luridly in a series of miscarriages of justice that bid fair to destroy public confidence in criminal justice. Professor Jackson and a number of other critics of the present arrangements have said the problems are inherent in a system where the expert evidence is called by prosecution and defence. Expert evidence is sometimes given by people whose level of knowledge, or whose ability to apply it, seems lamentably low. In 1960, the French set up a system under which court experts must be licensed before they are eligible to serve the court in a particular case. In France, the decision whether to appoint an expert, and if so how many and which one, rests with a judge. The French rules about experts are designed with the avowed aim of emphasizing the areas of agreement between experts, rather than the differences: consensualism rather than confrontation.
