Cornelia Dean On Science and Law
Cornelia Dean has a "commentary" in today's NY Times about courts trying to decide issues of science. She draws a hyper-simplistic distinction between the methods of science and law:
The justices may also consider that when scientists confront a problem, they collect all the information they can about it and then draw conclusions.
Lawyers work in reverse. They know their desired outcome at the outset, so they gather arguments to support it. While it would be unethical for scientists reporting on their work to omit findings that don’t fit their hypotheses, lawyers are under no compunction to introduce evidence that hurts their cases; that’s the other side’s job.
You do not have to be a lawyer to know that lawyers begin with learning the facts and then develop a legal theory based on the facts. Dean's simplistic description may apply to litigation attorneys on the verge of a trial, but it is highly inaccurate as a description of most lawyers generally.
You do not have to be a scientist to know that her depiction of them drawing conclusions only after they have gathered all the facts is also simplistic and ignores the fact that scientists are human too. They have their own preconceptions and bias.
Having said this, the article is interesting nonetheless. Many point to Philip Johnson's book Darwin on Trial as a landmark moment for the modern Darwinian skepticism movement. A law professor, Johnson applied legal standards of proof and evidence to macroevolutionary theory, and found that the evidence for it was far weaker than many believed. It explored whether the theory was based primarily on facts, or whether it was primarily dependent on philosophical materialism for its plausibility.
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For links to previous posts about Cornelia Dean articles, check out Cornucopia of Cornelia.
posted by Lawrence Selden @ 1:54 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Knowing when not to rule on scientific questions is as important as knowing how to rule on scientific questions. Courts should avoid ruling on scientific questions whenever possible, for the following reasons:
(1) The courts have no general constitutional or statutory authority to rule on scientific questions.
(2) For various reasons, the courts are ill-suited to rule on scientific questions.
(3) Many scientific questions cannot be answered on the basis of current knowledge.
I think that product liability cases and environmental cases might be the only kinds of cases where courts can justify ruling on scientific questions. Even the current global-warming case before the Supreme Court is really a matter of whether the US Environmental Protection Agency is obligated to consider regulating greenhouse gas emissions and not a matter of how the EPA should regulate those emissions or even whether the EPA should regulate those emissions (though those other questions could arise in future cases).
For further discussion, see --
http://im-from-missouri.blogspot.com/2006/08/arrogance-of-judge-jones.html
Also, Corny Dean wrote,
>>>>>"They [lawyers] know their desired outcome at the outset, so they gather arguments to support it. While it would be unethical for scientists reporting on their work to omit findings that don’t fit their hypotheses, lawyers are under no compunction to introduce evidence that hurts their cases; that’s the other side’s job."<<<<<
That is not entirely true -- in criminal trials, prosecutors are obligated to reveal evidence that would tend to exonerate the defendant.
You've picked up a new reader.
I'll be seeing ya.
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