NCJ Number
173549
Date Published
1998
Length
660 pages
Annotation
Intended as a law school casebook, this book instructs the reader in the actual and potential uses of social science in the American legal process and how these uses might be assessed.
Abstract
The book views social science as an analytical tool in the law, familiarity with which will heighten the lawyer's professional effectiveness. The book's objectives include the analysis of four subtopics, which are part of the larger involvement of social science in law: substantive law (legal rules that make the involvement relevant); legal method (the process of managing the involvement); social science findings (the relevant research results); and social science method (the techniques of conducting and analyzing that research). The first chapter considers the development and ramifications of "legal realism" as the jurisprudential movement that gave legitimacy to empirical inquiry. The second chapter offers a short introduction to fundamental concepts in evidence and in social science research. Remaining chapters then turn to the legal topics upon which social science has been applied. One of these chapters addresses the use of social science to determine factual issues specific to a particular case, and another chapter considers the use of social research by courts to establish legal rules that will not only determine the outcome of a particular case, but will also govern a broad category of future cases. The next chapter focuses on a use of social science by courts that falls somewhere between the uses identified in the previous chapter: the use of general social science research to provide a context or background for the determination of a factual issue important only in a particular case. The last chapter addresses the efforts of attorneys to use social science to prepare for trial. 48 references, a subject index, and appended Federal Rules of Evidence