Law Commons^™

Delay And Its Benefits For Judicial Rulemaking Under Scientific Uncertainty, Rebecca Haw Allensworth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court’s increasing use of science and social science in its decision-making has a rationalizing effect on law that helps ensure that a rule will have its desired effect. But resting doctrine on the shifting sands of scientific and social scientific opinion endangers legal stability. The Court must be be responsive, but not reactive, to new scientific findings and theories, a difficult balance for lay justices to strike. This Article argues that the Court uses delay — defined as refusing to make or change a rule in light of new scientific arguments at time one, and then making or …