Although not common in Canada, they have been a judicial fact of life for some time.
The decision removed a cloud from the federal sentencing guidelines, which depend on judicial fact-finding.
Guidelines that were "clearly designed for judicial fact-finding" were not suited for use by the jury, he said.
These accusations are false and have not been tested in court through cross-examination, verification, or judicial fact finding.
If it were accepted as a judicial fact that a politician of Mr Andreotti's standing helped boost the Mafia's fortunes, another huge furore would certainly ensue.
Justice Scalia also criticized the majority's reliance on statistics that had not been tested in the adversary process, calling it "judicial fact-finding masquerading as statutory interpretation".
After a United States Supreme Court ruling in 2004 on the issue, the federal appeals judges said, findings about issues like the character of a defendant could no longer be viewed as permissible judicial fact-finding.
From the standpoint of science studies, Daubert is flawed because it causes the judicial fact-finder to abandon both impartiality and symmetry, and to review challenged evidence without allowing it to engage in conversation with the challenger's evidentiary claims.
Like the academic sociologist, the judicial fact finder is also interested in demarcating the claims that can be reliably relied on from those that are not sufficiently grounded in acceptable standards of scientific inquiry.
Critics of the courts say many rulings are, in fact, "judicial legislation" that has turned the courts into dangerous institutions that too often seize the powers of legislators.
Seven years ago, during the Justice Department's antitrust case against Microsoft, the judicial "findings of fact" casually suggested that PCs are not necessarily used for Internet access; now it is difficult to find a PC that is not.
