Monahan and Walker's Social Science in Law, (7th Edition)
Social Science in Law is conceived as a traditional law school casebook, albeit on a non-traditional topic and with an effort to make it accessible to social scientists. The purpose of the book is to apprise the reader of the actual and potential uses of social science in the American legal process and how those uses might be evaluated. The book views social science as an analytic tool in the law, familiarity with which will heighten the lawyer's professional effectiveness and sharpen the legal scholar's insights.
The first two chapters build the foundation necessary for appreciating the uses that have been found for social science in law. The first chapter, Jurisprudential Origins of Social Science in Law, considers the development and ramifications of Legal Realism as the jurisprudential movement that gave legitimacy to empirical inquiry. The second chapter, A Primer of Legal and Social Science Methods, offers a short introduction to fundamental concepts in evidence and in social science research.
Rather than organize the substance of the book according to conventional legal categories (e.g., Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Civil Procedure) or traditional social science disciplines (e.g., Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology), Monahan and Walker have chosen a more conceptual scheme, one that has potential for uncovering relationships that span many different legal categories. They identify four major uses of social science in law.
In chapter three, Social Science Used to Determine Facts, the authors consider the first of these legal applications, the use of social science to determine factual issues specific to a particular case. In chapter four, Social Science Used to Make Law, they go on to consider the use of social research by courts to establish legal rules that will not only determine the outcome of a particular case, but will also govern a broad category of future cases. In the next chapter, Social Science Used to Provide Context, they consider a use of social science by courts that falls somewhere between the uses identified in chapters three and four: the use of general social science research to provide a context or background for the determination of a factual issue important only in a particular case. In the last chapter,
Social Science Used to Plan the Litigation of a Case, Monahan and Walker consider the efforts of attorneys to employ social science to prepare for trial.
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