The Importance of Expert Opinion

Expert opinion is a major source of ideas that influence the content of the law. The rational legislator or decision-maker relies on evidence, and so is bound to be influenced by the views of the experts who present it. The expert can play a role in legislative change, for instance by appearing as a witness in a committee hearing, or by being asked to investigate something. Science and technology can identify problems which gave rise to issues of liability and compensation (e.g. new scientific techniques for discovering diseases; new technologies raising the bar of consumer protection).

The modern use of the term “expert” dates from the 1880s, but specialist inspectors came much earlier in the nineteenth century. Factory inspectors were generally not scientists. The one exception was Robert Baker, who spent 44 years in the factory inspectorate in the middle of the century. He was medically qualified and, before becoming a bureaucrat, had practised medicine in Leeds and held a medical appointment at a Leeds woollen mill. Yet Baker showed little interest occupational disease, unlike Charles Turner Thackrah, also of Leeds, wrote about occupational hazards in 1831.

Victorian factory inspectors occasionally played a substantial part in reforming the law on occupational health and safety. If we take the case of industrial lead poisoning; Charles Dickens’s periodical All the Year Round raised the problem of illness among white lead workers in 1869. The issue came to the attention of a senior factory inspector, Alexander Redgrave, in 1875 and he requested junior inspectors to investigate. Their findings prompted Redgrave to raise the subject in a half-yearly report and in evidence to the Royal Commission on the Factory and Workshop Acts (1876). The Factory and Workshop Act, 1878 excluded children and young persons from employment in white lead works.