Social Science in Law: Reflections on Then and Now

In their brief essay (forthcoming in Law and Human Behavior), John Monahan & Laurens Walker (both at UVa) assess the continuities and changes that have occurred in the application of social science research to law during the past 25 years. It is an appropriate moment to reflect on changes and their velocity over time. An excerpted abstract follows:

"When the first edition [of the casebook Social Science in Law (2010)] appeared, courts’ reliance on social science was often confused and always contested. Now, courts’ reliance on social science is so common as to be unremarkable. What has changed - sometimes radically - are the substantive legal questions on which social science has been brought to bear."