Law's Dream of a Common KnowledgeIf knowledge is power, then the power of law can be studied through the lens of knowledge. This book opens up a substantive new area of legal research--knowledge production--and presents a series of case studies showing that the hybridity and eclecticism of legal knowledge processes make it unfruitful to ask questions such as, "Is law becoming more dominated by science?" Mariana Valverde argues that legal decision making cannot be understood if one counterposes science and technology, on the one hand, to common knowledge and common sense on the other. The case studies of law's flexible collage of knowledges range from determinations of drunkenness made by liquor licensing inspectors and by police, through police testimony in "indecency" cases, to how judges define the "truth" of sexuality and the harm that obscenity poses to communities. |
From inside the book
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... decisions - even decisions as weighty as imprisoning , deport- ing , or executing someone - have to be taken without full ... decision peculiar or preju- diced . These problems are compounded by the fact that neither the facts nor the ...
... decisions and statutes but also includes buildings ( e.g. , prisons ) , clothes ( robes , uniforms ) , information codes , individuals , institutions such as legislatures , law schools , and courts , professional associations , and ...
... decisions about voting. Another way of deploying this distinction is to point out that the opposite of “lies” is not Truth but rather “truths.” Outright lies are being told and disseminated in the name of justice as I write these lines ...
... decision, and thus law is institutionally less committed to epistemological unification. It is law's pragmatic logic that grounds the existence, in legal complexes, of a large number of different local epistemologies. What counts as a ...
... deciding whether a president ought to be impeached . By contrast with the better- known medical gaze and with the equally renowned actuarial gaze of statistics , the forensic gaze has received very little scholarly attention ...
Contents
1 | |
9780691086989_3CH2 | 28 |
9780691086989_4CH3 | 54 |
9780691086989_5CH4 | 86 |
9780691086989_6CH5 | 112 |
9780691086989_7CH6 | 141 |
9780691086989_8CH7 | 167 |
9780691086989_9CH8 | 193 |
9780691086989_10CH9 | 222 |
9780691086989_11BIB | 229 |
9780691086989_12IND | 241 |