“In 1993, in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the Supreme Court ruled that, under Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence (which covers both civil trials and criminal prosecutions in the federal courts), a ‘trial judge must ensure that any and all scientific testimony or evidence admitted is not only relevant, but reliable.’ The Court indicated that the subject of an expert’s testimony should be scientific knowledge, so that ‘evidentiary reliability will be based upon scientific validity.’ The Court also emphasized that, in considering the admissibility of evidence, a trial judge should focus ‘solely’ on the expert’s ‘principles and methodology,’ and ‘not on the conclusions that they generate.’ In sum, Daubert’s requirement that an expert’s testimony pertain to ‘scientific knowledge’ established a standard of ‘evidentiary reliability.’” – Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Sciences Community, National Research Council, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward
Month: March 2026
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 5.1
“We that have good wits have much to answer for.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 5.1
“That woman that cannot make her fault her husband’s occasion, let her never nurse her child herself, for she will breed it like a fool.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 4.1
“Make the doors upon a woman’s wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and it will out at the keyhole; stop that, ’twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 4.1
“Men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 4.1
“To have seen much, and to have nothing, is to have rich eyes and poor hands.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 4.1
“There are two ways in which the identification of the law of nature with the rule of man’s unfallen, or his regenerate, condition may tend to radical conclusions. To associate the natural with the unfallen state is to approach the general type of thought now described as primitivistic. To associate it with a regenerate condition presents, on the other hand, some affinity with the type of thought known as perfectibilitarian. In the eighteenth century these two types were to furnish, separately and together, the dominant modes of radical thinking. Discontent with the existing social order issued in the cry of ‘back to nature,’ or in the cry of ‘onward to perfection.’ Then the happy discovery was made that the two things were really identical: in order to go onward to perfection one had only to go back to nature for one’s rule. But before this blessed state of confusion could be achieved dogma must have disappeared or have been interpreted so figuratively that nothing but the smudged outline of its pattern persisted. In some of the radicals of the Puritan revolution these processes are seen at work.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“Scripture is the rule for the church; the law of nature, the only rule for the state. To attempt to introduce the Mosaic Law into the constitution of the state under the guise of natural law is sophistical. Nor are we left without strong indications of what the law of nature teaches in the civil sphere: it teaches that the people not only designate the persons of their governors, but bestow upon them all their power.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty