Laboratory of Justice: The Supreme Court's 200-Year Struggle to Integrate Science and the Law [Hardcover]

David L. Faigman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 3, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0805072748 | ISBN-13: 978-0805072747 | Edition: 1st

From the American Revolution to the genetic revolution, the U.S. Supreme Court's uneasy attempts to weave science into the Constitution

Suppose that scientists identify a gene that predicts that a person is likely to commit a serious crime. Laws are then passed making genetic tests mandatory, and anyone displaying the gene is sent to a treatment facility. Would the laws be constitutional?
In this illuminating history, legal scholar David L. Faigman reveals the tension between the conservative nature of the law and the swift evolution of scientific knowledge. The Supreme Court works by precedent, embedding the science of an earlier time into our laws. In the nineteenth century, biology helped settle the "race question" in the famous Dred Scott case; not until a century later would cutting-edge sociological data end segregation with Brown v. Board of Education. In 1973 Roe v. Wade set a standard for the viability of a fetus that modern medicine could render obsolete. And how does the Fourth Amendment apply in a world filled with high-tech surveillance devices?
To ensure our liberties, Faigman argues, the Court must embrace science, turning to the lab as well as to precedent.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Faigman, a professor at the University of California-Hastings College of the Law, examines the intersection of law and science in the constitutional rulings of the Supreme Court. For Faigman, the Constitution is a charter defining rights and obligations in broad terms, but the charter remains open to new interpretations as conditions change. Science certainly changes over time, and where legal decisions are based on science, they too must adapt as new science emerges and outmoded theories are discarded. Faigman shows how this evolutionary process occurs, detailing, for example, how 19th-century beliefs about racial hierarchies (the 1857 Dred Scott decision) gave way to a revised racial theory under which separate but equal public facilities were approved (in Plessy, 1892). A later generation of social scientists demonstrated how separate schools profoundly harmed black school children, and that data supported a new constitutional result in Brown v. Board of Education Still more recent social science comes before the Court regularly in its affirmative action cases. In addition to science bearing on race, the author considers many other points at which science has influenced constitutional law, including theories of eugenics once advanced to justify compulsory sterilization, and the biology of gestation underlying Roe v. Wade Throughout, Faigman traces the growing receptivity of the Court to empirical data and also shows how unsystematic, even haphazard, the process is for placing such facts before the Court. This insightful and accessible study throws light on how new ways of understanding the world produce new readings of our Constitution.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Legal scholar Faigman offers an interesting juxtaposition of politics and science from which to view the U.S. Constitution and American law. He begins by noting that science loves change while law loves the status quo. He then examines several legal positions that have been taken, viewing the Constitution from the perspective of "the science of the times." Among the cases he examines are the Dred Scott decision and how it was influenced by "scientific" knowledge of race at the time, in contrast to the Brown v. Board of Education decision nearly a century later. Notions about reproduction influenced the 1973 Roe v. wade decision, and changes in modern medical technology are certain to influence future decisions challenging Roe. Faigman also examines the tension, from the beginning until now, between those who want a limited role for federal government and more power for the states and those who favor a strong national government. An absorbing, highly accessible look at American law and how interpretations of the Constitution are grounded in the knowledge of the time. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Times Books; 1st edition (June 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805072748
• ISBN-13: 978-0805072747
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,668,405 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, January 16, 2012

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Bronx Book Guy - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Laboratory of Justice: The Supreme Court's 200-Year Struggle to Integrate Science and the Law (Hardcover)

I thought this book was going to focus on what the subtitle says but chunks of it is really just a discussion of a summary of various basic constitutional topics as such without specific focus on scientific matters. The book doesn't even have a chapter focused on the scientific concerns of the criminal justice system (such as what evidence is accepted, mental illness issues, eyewitness testimony, etc.). The chapter on privacy focuses as much on doctrine than focusing on the actual science involved in life and death issues.

Also, "laboratory" is not what many would think of when reading something that the book takes significant time addressing, that is basically the social science and legal theory aspects focused on the chapters about Holmes and a to my mind too long (particularly for a book of this sort) introduction spelling out the Federalist v. Antifederalist stance on the Constitution. I realize that social SCIENCE is involved here and it was helpful to discuss the different views of human nature involved pursuant to each side's views but it was not handled that well.

There seemed to be too much history and legal analysis that crowded out what the title of this book suggests this book would actually be about. Also, I repeatedly found errors, some just annoying -- how can a law professor, e.g., have the famous Carolene Products case come AFTER WWII began? Another case has Harlan saying something when the case cited occurred after he died. I just cite these as examples. Then, there are various comments or asides, like some case "all agree" opened a "very slippery slope" which is just not true or the rather curious idea that Taney would have been not seen as that horrible if he ONLY stopped with his comments on blacks. As to his "bigotry," his territory discussion in Dred Scott is not really what people now care about. The book also ignores that there actually was a big push even in Congress to have that matter decided in the courts, Congress opening up the way to accelerated review on the matter of slave ownership in the territories growing out of the Mexican War. If the book didn't spend so much time on legal theory, this sort of thing would perhaps be not as bad.

I gave the book three stars because it did have various interesting discussions regarding scientific matters, including the use of social science data in cases such as affirmative action and death penalty cases. Some history there is useful, so the problems cited above is a matter of degree, not necessary of kind. I wish it focused more on that type of thing than filling up so much space basically summarizing legal topics as if it was a run of the mill book on constitutional law. It could have summarized that stuff much more and spent more time on the science. As it is, the book is flawed, and you are left wanting more of what you thought the book was going to offer in the first place.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating View of the Supreme Court, January 23, 2005

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A Lexington, VA reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Laboratory of Justice: The Supreme Court's 200-Year Struggle to Integrate Science and the Law (Hardcover)

For those of us who primarily hear about Supreme Court cases through the news or at school, it is easy to forget that the actual Court decision that emerges from a case is the complex interaction of nine individuals interpreting the law and the facts. This book explores in fascinating detail how the Supreme Court's landmark decisions are very much a human endeavor reflecting the different justices' world views. While Faigman uses the justices' understanding of science (or sometimes misunderstanding) in making their legal decisions as his primary prism to examine the Court, the book is anything but simply a "law and science" book. To me, it was much more about how the justices bring their individual strengths and weaknesses, their hopes and fears as human beings, to deciding cases with profound implications for society. I always had assumed, for example, that Justice Taney, who decided the infamous Dred Scott decision that saw slaves as property to be owned, must have been a bigoted villain. While Taney by no means emerges from Faigman's telling as a hero, he does become much more of a three-dimensional figure, one who had deep personal qualms about slavery but who, in a terribly misguided way, thought he was saving the Union by his opinion in Dred Scott. In chapter after chapter, Faigman similarly shows how Court decisions that we have all heard of, like Brown v. Board of Education, are much more than simply decisions reflecting "The Law," but reflect individual justices' struggles with changing scientific and social understandings. I don't know if the author meant the title "Laboratory of Justice" to have another meaning beyond looking at how the Court tries to adapt the law as science changes our understanding of the world around us, but as I read the book, I did find myself thinking of the justices not as the scientists running the "laboratory of justice" but as part of the experiment itself going on in the laboratory of justice. This is a superb book for anyone who wants to gain insight into the Court's workings as told by someone with a keen eye for interesting facts that are insightful and entertaining at the same time.