African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights examines the emerging trend of requests for expert opinions in asylum hearings or refugee status determinations. This is the first book to explore the role of court-based expertise in relation to African asylum cases and the first to establish a rigorous analytical framework for interpreting the effects of this new reliance on expert testimony.

Over the past two decades, courts in Western countries and beyond have begun demanding expert reports tailored to the experience of the individual claimant. As courts increasingly draw upon such testimony in their deliberations, expertise in matters of asylum and refugee status is emerging as an academic area with its own standards, protocols, and guidelines. This deeply thoughtful book explores these developments and their effects on both asylum seekers and the experts whose influence may determine their fate.

Contributors: Iris Berger, Carol Bohmer, John Campbell, Katherine Luongo, E. Ann McDougall, Karen Musalo, Tricia Redeker Hepner, Amy Shuman, Joanna T. Tague, Meredith Terretta, and Charlotte Walker-Said.

Drawing from forty-five years of experience, E. Richard Hart elucidates the use of history as expert testimony in American Indian tribal litigation. Such lawsuits deal with aboriginal territory; hunting, fishing, and plant gathering rights; reservation boundaries; water rights; federal recognition; and other questions that have a historical basis. The methodology necessary to assemble successful expert testimony for tribes is complex and demanding and the legal cases have serious implications for many thousands of people, perhaps for generations.

Hart, a historian who has testified in cases that have resulted in roughly a billion dollars in judgments, uses specific cases to explain at length what kind of historical research and documentation is necessary for tribes seeking to protect and claim their rights under United States law. He demonstrates the legal questions that Native Americans face by exploring the cultural history and legal struggles of six Indian nations. He recounts how these were addressed by expert testimony grounded in thorough historical understanding, research, and argumentation. The case studies focus on the Wenatchi, Coeur d’Alene, Hualapai, Amah Mutsun, Klamath, and Zuni peoples but address issues relevant to many American tribes. 

In Latin America, as early as 1975 testimony given under oath by anthropologists has been applied in the civil law systems in a number of Latin American countries.  Called peritajes antropológicos culturales, this testimony can come in the form of written affidavits and/or oral testimony. These experts build bridges of intercultural dialogue, which overcome language and cultural barriers that have historically limited equal access to justice for indigenous and ethnic people all over the word. 

Culture as Judicial Evidence in Latin America summarizes the current state of this work in six countries: Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay, and lays out the challenges and dilemmas involved in the creation and use of cultural expert testimony. Organized into three sections, the book advances a framework for the use of cultural evidence, and presents readers with nine case studies based on trials in six individual countries.  These countries have implemented legal reform, constitutional amendments and the adoption of international legislation to create the legal frameworks that enable this new form of legal evidence to be admissible in Latin American courts.  The contributing authors are cultural anthropologists with vast experience researching the impact of cultural expert witness testimony. A forward-looking final section examines the dilemmas and challenges of this work that remain to be solved.