This article investigates how civil court judges practice meta-expertise in cases that feature contradictory and inconclusive medical expertise. The empirical case study consists of a sample of eleven Helsinki district court verdicts from 2014–2017, drawn from a larger number of similar traffic insurance compensation cases. The case-type features a medical controversy concerning traumatic brain injury (TBI) diagnostics. I contend that the difficulties judges face in evaluating the medical expertise result from epistemic asymmetries between legal and medical professionals. This study highlights the importance of explaining and understanding how judges overcome uncertainty and discriminate between expert positions. Drawing from earlier studies on meta-expertise and judges’ practice of evaluating expertise in court, I introduce the concept ‘socio-technical review’ to describe judges’ practice of facilitating highly technical and esoteric scientific expertise to needs of judicial decision making. I argue that socio-technical review is a special form of practicing meta-expertise, which effectively allows meta-experts to manage epistemic asymmetries. In examining how meta-expertise is practiced in the TBI case-type, the paper contributes to general sociological understanding of decision-making under uncertainty and suggests further studies in comparable settings.

This study examines two different approaches in empirical analysis of judges’ evaluation of expertise in court: first, an analyst-based approach that employs predefined normative criteria to measure judges’ performance, and second, an actor-based approach that emphasizes interpretative flexibility in judges’ evaluation practice. I demonstrate how these different approaches to investigating judges’ adjudication lead to differing understandings about judges’ abilities to evaluate scientific evidence and testimonial. Although the choice of analytical approach might depend on context and purpose in general, I contend that in assessing judges’ competence, an actor-based approach that adequately describes the way in which judges relate to and handle expertise is required to properly understand and explain how judges evaluate expertise. The choice of approach is especially important if the resulting understanding of judges’ competence is subsequently used as a basis for making normative and prescriptive claims with potential consequences for trial outcomes.

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While writing this editorial in the end of March 2020, the world is struggling to contain the virus SARS-CoV-2, which has caused the most severe pandemic since the beginning of the 20 th century and the Spanish flu. Despite regular warn-