Judicial Expertise in Europe

Abstract

Dedicated to expertise, this chapter echoes the complexity of the subject, complexity that stems from the lack of uniformity of the status of the expert in the world. There are two major legal systems, civil law (the majority of European countries) and common law (England, Wales, Australia, Canada except Québec, the United States except Louisiana). In the civil law system, the judge generally appoints the expert, while in the common law system, it is generally the parties. Depending on different legal and judicial systems, experts are subject to protean rules, involving multiple modes of intervention within the trial. The objective of the following paragraphs is therefore to extract the main axes that characterize each of the major judicial systems, without seeking to be exhaustive, and with the sole aim of better understanding the stakes.