Customer Reviews

Legal Alchemy: The Use and Misuse of Science in the Law

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This book is what might result if you crossed a book by Stephen Jay Gould with a book like A Civil Action. Like Gould and Harr, this book takes an interesting topic that most of us would not otherwise know about, and provides a vivid and accessible picture of what is happening. To illustrate his theme that the law often is ill-equipped to assimilate scientific findings, Faigman uses topics like gray wolves, the space station and our beloved SUV's. For what at first might sound like a "heavy" topic, the book flows right along, nicely spiced with the author's wry observations. I'd recommend this book to anyone whatever their background -- lawyer, scientist or someone who simply is interested in hot social topics.

Legal Alchemy provides a thoughtful, engaging and genuinely entertaining guide to the scientific and not-so-scientific information on which law-making in our society is often premised. Its numerous illustrations provide a basis for evaluating the law and policies purportedly generated by science, as well as a caution about leaving our lawmaker's use of science unchecked. Legal Alchemy is essential reading for everyone who is affected by law and law-making (i.e., everyone).

Legal Alchemy is a nicely written and accurate description of the difficulties lawmakers face when judging science. In my twenty years experience writing and teaching about the use of science, particularly statistics, in law, I have never read such an engaging, thorough discussion of how the lawmakers turn scientific dross into gold and scientific gold into legal dross. This book is perfect for the layperson interested in the use of science in law. It contains innumerable examples of how scientific developments are treated in law and policy and discussion of all of the most important legal cases dealing with scientific evidence. Perhaps best of all, it contains Faigman's sound and well-reasoned judgments of various questions of scientific and legal policy.

Legal Alchemy presents science and law at the perfect level for the intelligent lay person. I include judges, legislators, and lawyers in that group because, while knowledgeable about law, few know anything about science. To those lawmakers seeking a more detailed description of the science relevant to specific legal issues, I highly recommend another of Faigman's works, a multi-volume treatise titled MODERN SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE.

As to the critical comments from a reviewer on May 4, 2000, I cannot imagine what was motivating that person. I find Faigman's understanding of science and statistics to be more than adequate to the task. Most of Faigman's discussion of statistics appears in Chapter III. He does not explain statistics the way one statistician would to another statistician, and the lay reader will be thankful. He does explain the methodology correctly and thoroughly. I see no grounds for complaint. One who doubts Faigman's understanding of science should consult MODERN SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE, mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Faigman's text is an entertaining and fast-paced introduction to critical thinking. He covers interpreting texts (constitution), supporting arguments, recognizing ambiguity, and distinguishing fact from assumption. He squeezes the lessons of Kafka's "The Trial", and a brief history of science between lively moments in judicial decision-making.

This book promises much and delivers little. It is poorly edited (PatRobertson becomes Pat Robinson, for example) and the lawyer author'sunderstanding of science is wretchedly superficial and often plain wrong (he doesn't understand statistics, for example). This is especially amusing, as one of his points is the suspect understanding of science by most lawyers (I guess he would know). Faigman's view of science is of the 9th grade highschool variety. There are many more sophisticated views available. This is a wasted opportunity. Don't waste your money along with it.

What's the real issue here? Why is simple truth so hard to ascertain? What are the genuine relations between law, science, and religion? Considering the three in terms of Western human history, we know that all three are concerned with establishing truth in any manner of matters, but are products of their own society in time. Religion, the most basic element of human organization and inquiry, is founded on the principle of basic organization of groups. If we appeal to Durkheim (mysteriously missing from Faigman's discussions on the manner of religion), we learn that religion's truth is a simple truth, emanating from the very establishment of institutional leadership. One takes what one can get, often with utmost satisfaction. The Greeks, of course, among there numerous contributions to classical thought, established the fact that the human mind, and thus human motives and actions, are capable of deceit and being deceived. Hence, an advocacy-oriented system of law must be put in place, to act as a crucible for the determination of truth(theoretically). This is the epistemological gap Faigman so cleverly inserts himself within, establishing for us once again that humans are capable of deceit and being deceived, even within the inquiry-as-advocacy model.

Science picks up where religion and law leave off: rather than relying solely on human interpretations of moral and immoral, just and unjust, there exists as well the appeal to true and not true, grounded in the skeptical inquiry and examination of the ontological and phenomenonological "real world", by use of the scientific method. Surprise surprise, Faigman's stunning contribution is to assert once again: the human mind is capable of deceit and being deceived. Sometimes wolves will kill, sometimes they won't, even if they are wearing sheep's clothing. Oh dear, how shall we cope? It is at this point that Faigman enters a game in which he believes himself to be the sole player: the sociology of the scientific fact. And by not acknowledging that this is the domain upon which he now treads, he betrays his own ignorance: one must become a "sophisticated consumer[s] of science"? Balance the heads of the hydra with a system of checks and balances? We have only to look at how our current government's system of checks and balances is working to see the outcome of this prescription: human beings will die as a result of archaic precedents of inquiry, of matters religious, legal, and scientific, and the tightropes spanning between them.

The reader is much better off buying Sheila Jasanoff's "Science at the Bar" for a more rewarding discussion.