NCJ Number
112643
Journal
Law and Policy Volume: 10 Issue: 2-3 Dated: (April and July 1988) Pages: 215-252
Date Published
1988
Length
38 pages
Annotation
This article examines how the participation of scientific experts and consultants yields rationality and influences the rationalities of legal decisionmakers in the enactment of the Second Law Against Economic Crime in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Abstract
The analysis highlights the dynamics of an expert commission and the cognitive structures of its members. In this case, the quality of the commission and its experts was a result of the institution involved in the law-making process. Lawyers in the Criminal Justice Department were almost exclusively criminal-justice sector lawyers. Members of the commission who were not lawyers had considerable communication problems in the commission. Parliament's involvement in the process and the choice of experts was relatively late. By this time, the weight of lobby groups had increased within the group of experts, and the rationalities of experts became more clearly oriented toward the realization of their organizations' or professions' interests and goals. Politicians used only a limited number of politically relevant arguments and argued at a low level of purposiveness and rationality referencing systems that confirmed their positions. This contributed to polarization in the group whereby strong arguments of the expert commission were overcome by the argumentatively heavily supported pressure of industrial lobby groups. 5 tables, 19 notes, and 21 references.