Science at the Bar: Science and Technology in American Law (Twentieth Century Fund Books/Reports/Studies)

by Sheila Jasanoff

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Issues spawned by the headlong pace of developments in science and technology fill the courts. How should we deal with frozen embryos and leaky implants, dangerous chemicals, DNA fingerprints, and genetically engineered animals? The realm of the law, to which beleaguered people look for answers, is sometimes at a loss--constrained by its own assumptions and practices, Sheila Jasanoff suggests. This book exposes American law's long-standing involvement in constructing, propagating, and perpetuating a variety of myths about science and technology.

Science at the Bar is the first book to examine in detail how two powerful American institutions--both seekers after truth--interact with each other. Looking at cases involving product liability, medical malpractice, toxic torts, genetic engineering, and life and death, Jasanoff argues that the courts do not simply depend on scientific findings for guidance--they actually influence the production of science and technology at many different levels. Research is conducted and interpreted to answer legal questions. Experts are selected to be credible on the witness stand. Products are redesigned to reduce the risk of lawsuits. At the same time the courts emerge here as democratizing agents in disputes over the control and deployment of new technologies, advancing and sustaining a public dialogue about the limits of expertise. Jasanoff shows how positivistic views of science and the law often prevent courts from realizing their full potential as centers for a progressive critique of science and technology.

With its lucid analysis of both scientific and legal modes of reasoning, and its recommendations for scholars and policymakers, this book will be an indispensable resource for anyone who hopes to understand the changing configurations of science, technology, and the law in our litigious society.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4 out of 5 stars

Clear, well-researched & useful, 2006-12-26
Sheila Jasanoff writes books that are well-researched, clear and useful for people in a variety of areas: public policy, science studies, law & society, biotech/analysis.

I have read most of her books, and recommended this to (advanced) students, who also found it very useful.

I probably would not have bothered to review it here: it is obviously good, and has been well received elsewhere. But I felt moved to counteract (what I regarded as) the highly misleading negative review printed below.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2 out of 5 stars

Biased against science., 2003-01-21
This is not a law text nor a history of science text but a sociology text. Her language shows a bias against scientific analysis, and in favor of sociologists (her profession): peer review is said to give an "impartial facade"; scientific experts are said to have a "technocratic bias." Two other scholars are said to have "complete disregard for findings in contemporary... sociology." Science in general is said to have too high a reputation for credibility: "science generally functions in an atmosphere of credulousness..."

The implication is that courts should allow in all opposing scientific claims, since "science" has no claims to "truth" greater than any other profession.

Only recommended for its survey of cases and judicial/regulatory opinions and trends over the last several decades.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars Undoing Junk Science, 2000-05-16
This really excellent book should be required reading for every lawyer who expects to handle expert evidence. Sheila Jasanoff's scholarly and reflective analysis will tell you far more about the law's construction of science than any of Peter Huber's musings (or, if you will, rantings) on the subject.

Readers will find Jasanoff's critique of the leading cases of Frye v United States and Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc particularly helpful in understanding the law's constuction of expertise. Jasanoff does not descend to the dust of the arena as Huber does but that does not mean that she avoids trenchant criticism.

Her views are nicely understated. For example, she notes that the majority opinion in Daubert was drafted by Justice Blackmun, "regarded at that time as the court's leading authority on science". She has the good taste not to remark that Blackmun was a mathematician and that most of his expertise in science was founded on little more than that he came from a family of physicians. This background also gave rise to the pseudo-medical privacy analysis (rather than an equal protection one) employed in Roe v Wade and has been the cause of many of that case's subsequent woes. Her evaluation of the worth of Daubert can be seen in her phrase "Daubert's fine disregard for a philosophically coherent decision rule on admissibility may exemplify the common law's genius for muddling through..."

Readers who have enjoyed Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action will find much of interest in her chapter entitled "Toxic Torts and the Politics of Causation". Her treatment of genetic patents and of brushes between the law and genetic engineering is illuminating and topical.

In summary, this book is a very satisfying and readable treatment of a topic that most lawyers and judges find indigestible. Highly recommended.

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