LABORATORY OF JUSTICE: The Supreme Court's 200-Year Struggle to Integrate Science and the Law
David Faigman, . . Holt/Times, $27.50 (432pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-7274-7
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
Reviewed on: 04/19/2004
Genre: Nonfiction