Utilizzazione delle conoscenze esperte nel processo civile - Alcune ipotesi di carattere generale

The problematic relation between science and law has been here considered as a means to stress the huge gap between the Italian and the American approach, in the context of civil litigation. This gap seems to be basically connected with the absence in our legal system of a serious concern for the quality of science used in a civil lawuit, while this very problem has become, especially at the beginning of the second millennium, the core of a wide discussion in case law as well as in the academic debate. The American evolution in this area has somehow widened the abovementioned gap. Since 1993 the American legal culture has strived to reach a high selective standard of expert knowledge in civil litigation, through a very elaborate system of gatekeeping in order to avoid any sort of “junk science” access in court. And this has consequently brought about an important change in the rules of evidence at a federal level. Nothing similar has so far occurred in the Italian experience, while the need of an evolution in this sense seems absolutely needed as this essay is strongly suggesting.