Legal Engineering: Contested Representations of Law, Science (and Non-science) and Society

In: Social studies of science: an international review of research in the social dimensions of science and technology, Band 32, Heft 3, S. 371-412

Abstract

Recently, in the case of Kumho Tire Co v. Carmichael, the US Supreme Court revisited the seminal Daubert judgment, and the meaning of the Federal Rules of Evidence (1975) when considering the appropriate admissibility standard for non-scientific expert evidence in US federal courts. This article examines the Kumho decision in relation to the evolving US federal jurisprudence surrounding the admission and use of expert evidence. In particular, inter-related representations of law, science and engineering, the jury, expertise, and the social costs of litigation, derived from amicus curiae briefs and briefs submitted on behalf of each of the parties, are contrasted with the eventual judgment in an attempt to map some of the social contours informing the decision. As part of an ongoing contest, the case of Kumho is interpreted as the latest in a series of judgments generally favourable to corporate defendants aspiring to raise the standard for the admissibility of expert evidence through strategically adumbrated images of evidentiary reliability, concerns about jury competence, and the prevalence of so-called `junk science'.