Conjectures and Exhumations: Citations of History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science in US Federal Courts

Abstract

This article examines the circumstances in which a version of Sir Karl Popper’s philosophy of science became US law. Among historians, philosophers and sociologists of science, as well as legal commentators, the US Supreme Court’s Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, .Inc. (1993) decision has received considerable attention. The case is signiŽ cant because America’s most senior court produced a deŽ nition of science (for legal purposes). This deŽ nition was authorized by the symbolic exhumation, celebration and appropriation of key elements of the philosophy of science developed decades earlier by Popper. SigniŽ cantly, it was not just Popper’s philosophy that was exhumed and resurrected but also his standing and the social authority of philosopy more generally. This article explores how the US Supreme Court invoked a mediated and essentialized representation of Popper’s philosophy of science — in a context where the quality of expert evidence seems to have been conceived as a pressing socio-legal problem — to support the inauguration of a more onerous response to admissibility decision making in federal courts. In undertaking this task we also re ect on the use of the writings of other philosophers, historians and sociologists of science which have appeared somewhat erratically in recent judgments. These later references have been conspicuously less in uential than the Supreme Court’s attempt to grapple with the nature of science in Daubert. In order to substantiate our claims we provide an analysis of references to the history, philosophy and sociology of science which have appeared in US federal court decisions. Our sample was gathered using the relatively straightforward methodology of searching the WESTLAW