Abstract
Abstract Environmental models are ubiquitous in assessing the environmental impacts of planned projects. Modelling is an inferential process and includes various mechanisms to address the uncertainty of the outcome. In this article, we acknowledge the continuum of uncertainty assessments and identify the legal mechanisms with which Finnish judicial review—characterised by broad scope of review and in-house expert judges—has encountered model uncertainty. Closely examining 10 waters-related cases heard by the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland, we explain the porous yet substantial boundary between science and law revealed by the cases. The cases demonstrate the elegance with which courts can strike a balance between the contingent precautionary principle, gradually decreasing scientific uncertainty, and the procedural constraints under which they operate. We conclude by analysing the traces towards reciprocality and adaptivity the cases reveal, encouraged by the iterative modelling mechanism and challenged by the constitutional restrictions on the scope of review.
Highlights
Environmental models are ubiquitous in assessing the environmental impacts of planned projects
We acknowledge the continuum of uncertainty assessments and identify the legal mechanisms with which Finnish judicial review—characterised by broad scope of review and in-house expert judges—has encountered model uncertainty
We focus on the uncertainty assessments that are conducted along the way
Summary
The boundaries of science—where science ends and society begins—have been addressed in sociology,[1] and philosophers have pondered the difference between scientific questions and questions in science,[2] or how legal questions can influence. Show how our example court requires at times perhaps an even unrealistically high level of certainty from models, offering a good reason to analyse more closely this science and law boundary. We delve into these mechanisms in our cases and conclude our analysis in the final section.[8]. We examine the legal and scientific mechanisms for addressing model uncertainty and study whether the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland (‘the Court’, ‘the SAC’) has succeeded in negotiating a balance between the two. Did the modellers and the Court seem to understand each other? Did the Court manage to take the inferential process into account? We conclude in Section 5.3 by sketching a mutually reinforcing way forward
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