Science, Litigation & the Public Accountability 
of Vertically Integrated Expertise

This project will provide a timely re-think of the scope of current studies of law and science through a comprehensive review and analysis of an emerging shift in the culture of expert knowledge in the post-Daubert era.

A wealth of commentary over the last decade has attempted to determine appropriate ways to manage scientific expert evidence in legal and regulatory settings. This has been stimulated by:

• widely publicised cases of miscarriage of justice resulting from courts accepting dubious forensic and psychiatric evidence
• claims that many mass toxic tort cases have relied on 'junk science' generated for the purposes of litigation ;
• a number of 'landmark' legal decisions (Daubert) which have reviewed the way courts should assess scientific and expert evidence 

The term "Vertically Integrated Expertise" (adopted from economics literature) refers to the active intervention both 'upstream' and 'downstream' by science-law experts in a number of recent controversial, science-law interactions.

Vertically Integrated Experts begin to function like 'heterogeneous engineers' - operating across numerous layers of the scientific/legal process: from the laboratory-to-courtroom-to-judgement or regulatory decision .

Exploring important trends in the processes of mutual construction of law and science will take SSK (Sociology of Scientific Knowledge) literature in a new direction.

Providing a more accurate accurate appraisal  of emerging new forms of expertise in such settings is a significant pre-condition to forming better policies and regulatory approaches to ensure public accountability of expertise and legal decision-making involving science and technology.

[full project description]

This project is supported by an Australian Research Council
Discovery Project grant: DP0558176; $60,000