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Political scientists serve in courtrooms as expert witnesses on many topics related to their professional training: elections, same-sex marriages, employer sanctions for hiring undocumented aliens, school desegregation, political asylum requests, property rights, and racial profiling, among many others. It is not by chance that we--the authors--have chosen to testify as experts in cases concerning elections (see also Cain 1999). Election-related cases compose a large percentage of all cases involving political scientists brought to court: a study of references to expert testimony by political scientists in published federal district court decisions from 1950 through 1989 reports that 61% involved election law issues (Leigh 1991). Our replication of this study for the period of 2000 through December 18, 2010, reveals that 74% of such cases (28 of 38) involved election law issues.1 These cases involved issues of minority vote dilution, redistricting, alternative election systems (cumulative and limited voting), campaign financing, voting equipment and invalid ballots, voter registration, nominating petition requirements, and a number of other issues.2
Our political science expertise is particularly relevant to issues of how political competition is or should be structured and how election structures interact with the behavior of voters to affect election outcomes and other facets of the electoral process that are often litigated. Yet despite political science's relevance for this area, relatively few political scientists serve as courtroom expert witnesses, perhaps because these jobs are not easy to find. This kind of employment is not listed in the APSA Personnel Service Newsletter, the Chronicle of Higher Education, or any other standard job listing. Expert witnesses may be recruited through informal networks or by over-the-transom requests. They may be referred by a friend, schoolmate, or mentor (as happened to McDonald), or they may have had a chance meeting with an attorney at a party (as happened to Engstrom). A nonacademic practitioner may need an expert in a particular field and be sufficiently familiar with the scholarly literature to identify a likely candidate. Organizations such as the Southern Coalition for Social Justice have even begun recruiting and training scholars for the rigors of expert witness testimony in their policy advocacy areas.
The historical lack of formal recruitment mechanisms may be diminishing as time goes...