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Cultures of Facts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2003

Kim Lane Scheppele
Affiliation:
Professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania (kimlane@law.upenn.edu). Please e-mail all comments and criticisms to the author, or mail them to her at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, 3400 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. The author thanks Jennifer Hochschild and the anonymous reviewers for this journal who provided constructive feedback on an earlier version of this essay

Extract

Why is it so hard for relevant social science findings to ake their way into courtrooms, either at the trial level or on appeal? From the perspective of the social scientist, Patricia Wald is the ideal judge—someone who takes empirical research seriously and wants to use it when she can. But the fact that even a sympathetic judge like Judge Wald finds this to be difficult should tell us something. Legal professionals and social scientists have different cultures of facts.

Type
Perspectives
Copyright
© 2003 by the American Political Science Association

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