Overview

"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"" examines 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 centres for a progressive critique of science and technology. With its analysis of both scientific and legal modes of reasoning, and its recommendations for scholars and policymakers, this book should be a useful resource for anyone who hopes to understand the changing configurations of science, technology and the law in our litigious society."

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9780674793026

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Reviews

[Jasanoff] provides a provocative and informative survey of the multiplying areas of dispute in which science and technology have come to figure in the legal system. Her topics include product liability, medical malpractice, the regulation of toxics, biotechnology and patents, reproductive rights and dispositions for the dying... Science at the Bar is an important, ground-breaking book, a clearly written work that assists us in coming to grips with the troublesome issues raised by our society's experience in the complicated interplay of science and the law. -- Daniel J. Kevles American Scientist

This is a perceptive and elegantly written book on how science and law interact both to produce knowledge and to resolve conflict.--George J. Annas Nature

Author Information

Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

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