Petition of the day

Issues: (1) Whether the two-part standard of reviewing expert-admissibility rulings employed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, along with the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 3rd and 7th Circuits, improperly empowers these courts to reverse district court decisions to exclude evidence without “the deference that is the hallmark of abuse-of-discretion review”; and (2) whether an expert’s qualifications and mere invocation of a scientific methodology can be sufficient to require admission of his testimony, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit concluded, or whether Federal Rule of Evidence 702 requires that a witness, no matter how qualified, must also satisfy the court that his methodology was “reliably applied to the facts of the case,” as several other circuits have held.