Sabrineh Ardalan

Expert as Aid and Impediment: Navigating Barriers to Effective Asylum Representation

This chapter opens by explaining the importance of expert testimony in asylum representation given adjudicators’ increasing demands for corroboration in recent years. It then addresses the sometimes-conflicting perspectives of experts and attorneys, and the need for increased transparency and communication among experts and attorneys about their roles and responsibilities. It concludes by arguing that explicit protocols must be adopted in order to improve collaboration between experts and attorneys in the asylum process and to mediate the divide between objectivity and advocacy that is often at issue in these cases.