Law and Science

The conditions of contemporary life have been shaped in large part by science and technology extending human life, shrinking the globe, traveling into space. To effect human life and nature, for good or ill, enhancing safety or risk, science must be transformed by legal procedures from hypotheses and laboratory experiments into property and products. Both the legal processes and scientific practices derive legitimacy from being publicly observable and rational. Through their defining methods, both law and science attempt to constrain the use of unregulated force. Yet, despite their purportedly open and available processes, both science and legality are experienced as arcane, impenetrable, and often uninterpretable. Neither law nor science achieves the transparency to which it aspires. These two volumes collect exemplary law and society scholarship to look beneath the surface connections and antagonisms between these two powerful modern institutions. The first volume collects together articles on science as it enters legal domains, primarily as evidence and legitimation for political authority and the second explores how law acts within the domains of science, primarily as resources and regulations channeling both the practices of scientists and the consequences of scientific production.

Susan S. Silbey is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.