Watson2024
| Watson2024 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Watson2024 |
| Author(s) | Patrick G. Watson, Carmen Nave |
| Title | Perspicuous sites for justice? Michael Lynch’s studies of law, science, and expertise |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Michael Lynch |
| Publisher | |
| Year | 2024 |
| Language | English |
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| Month | |
| Journal | Ethnographic Studies |
| Volume | 20 |
| Number | |
| Pages | 296-312 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.26034/lu.ethns.2024.6923 |
| ISBN | |
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Abstract
In 2007, Michael Lynch wrote that he was ‘drawn to law courts as sites for investigating “science”, “scientific methods”, and the science/commonsense distinction’ (108) and that ’[His] particular interest in courts as perspicuous sites for examining “science” arises from a long-standing interest in day-to-day practices in scientific laboratories and field studies’ (110). We, of course, do not dispute this account, although we take this opportunity to suggest that our experience working with Lynch over the last five years on a study of criminal trials for police officers charged in on-duty shooting incidents revealed motives or interests beyond just the science-law interface. Lynch’s studies of pre-trial negotiations (1982), perjury trials (Brannigan and Lynch 1987), the Iran Contra hearings (Lynch and Bogen, 1996), and DNA evidence (Lynch et al. 2010) are each, in our opinion, driven by a profound concern with a more equivocating subject: justice. We will recount how Lynch’s interest in science, expertise, and law informed our collaborative efforts, as well as some of our impressions of Lynch’s desire to contribute to the fortification of civil rights in the midst of America’s second ‘racial reckoning.’
Notes
