This paper examines the work of sociologists as expert witnesses and how sociological theory is used in criminal trials. The study describes how alternative sociological theories were propounded by sociologist expert witnesses and used by competing lawyers to establish the correct understanding of the case. The paper indicates that the sociological testimony was relevant to the deliberations and verdicts and details how the judge's and jurors' practical treatment of the law and evidence reconciled the adversaries' mutually exclusive, partisan positions and the theoretical bases for those positions.Sociologists participate directly in the legal process by serving as expert witnesses who offer evidence at trials involving disputed factual and legal matters. Sociologists played such a role in the famous United States Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education 347 US 483 (1954) involving school desegregation, with one party to the dispute arguing that discrimination produced negative effects on child development (Clark and Clark 1947). Indeed, such courtroom settings offer the unusual opportunity to study the dynamics of theoretical competition in applied social science since the dispute over the social scientific theories is conducted in a public forum, the adversaries each present a theory in support of a certain interpretation of the issues at hand, the opposing party typically disputes that theory and/or its interpretation, and there is a clear outcome to the dispute) In this paper we analyze such a perspicuous setting, the Reginald Denny beating trial (California v. Williams and Watson).
There has been little examination of the work of judges as mediators. This article addresses a much‐neglected but distinctive and increasingly prevalent kind of mediation work: mediation of large money damage cases by acting and former judges. The study finds that public and private judge‐mediators routinely encounter certain obstacles to settlement and develop specific skills for addressing them. The research also identifies several key differences between the problems, tasks, and alternatives of judicial mediation in the public courts versus in private cases.
This paper explores how scientific knowledge is used in a criminal case. I examine materials from an admissibility hearing in a murder trial and discuss the dynamics of contesting expert scientific opinion and evidence. The research finds that a purported form of ''science'' in the relevant scientific community is filtered through, tested by, and subjected to legal standards, conceptions, and procedures for determining admissibility. The paper details how the opposing lawyers, the expert witness, and the judge vie to contingently work out what will count in court as appropriate scientific authority, methods and evidence, and as a scientifically valid and legally admissible account of ''reasonable fear.'' When science becomes enmeshed in legal controversies, science does not trump law. Rather, it is the court's canons of proper procedure and measures of substantive adequacy that take precedence.
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