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Full-Text Articles in Law
Arsenic And Old Chemistry: Images Of Mad Alchemists, Experts Attacking Experts, And The Crisis In Forensic Science, David S. Caudill
Arsenic And Old Chemistry: Images Of Mad Alchemists, Experts Attacking Experts, And The Crisis In Forensic Science, David S. Caudill
Working Paper Series
Drawing on research into the use of experts in early 19th-century criminal trials, the image of mad alchemists in popular culture representations of science, and the distinction between empirical and contingent “interpretive repertoires” in the discourse of scientific controversies, this article explores the controversy over arsenic-detection technologies prior to the Marsh test. In addition to noting the predictable criticism of incompetent expertise in the service of law, this article highlights implied accusations of hubris and amorality on the part of over-confident experts, both in the early 19th-century and in today's crisis of forensic science.
The Death Of The American Trial, Robert P. Burns
The Death Of The American Trial, Robert P. Burns
Faculty Working Papers
This short essay is a summary of my assessment of the meaning of the "vanishing trial" phenomenon. It addresses the obvious question: "So what?" It first briefly reviews the evidence of the trial's decline. It then sets out the steps necessary to understand the political and social signficance of our vastly reducing the trial's importance among our modes of social ordering. The essay serves as the Introduction to a book, The Death of the American Trial, soon to be published by the University of Chicago Press.