The Supreme Court, for example, has recently decided cases involving basic questions of human liberty, the resolution of which demanded an understanding of scientific matters. The medical question did not determine the answer to the legal question, but to do our legal job properly, we needed to develop an informed, although necessarily approximate, understanding of the state of that relevant scientific art. A different case in 1997 challenged the constitutionality of a state sexual psychopath statute. The law required a determination of when a person can be considered so dangerous and mentally ill that the threat he or she poses to public safety justifies indefinite noncriminal confinement, a question that implicates science and medicine as well as law. The Supreme Court's docket is only illustrative.
Scientific issues permeate the law.
Courts review the reasonableness of administrative agency conclusions about the safety of a drug, the risks attending nuclear waste disposal, the leakage potential of a toxic waste dump, or the risks to wildlife associated with the building of a dam. Patent law cases can turn almost entirely on an understanding of the underlying technical or scientific subject matter. And, of course, tort law often requires difficult determinations about the risk of death or injury associated with exposure to a chemical ingredient of a pesticide or other product. The importance of scientific accuracy in the decision of such cases reaches well beyond the case itself. A decision wrongly denying compensation in a toxic substance case, for example, can not only deprive the plaintiff of warranted compensation but also discourage other similarly situated individuals from even trying to obtain compensation and can encourage the continued use of a dangerous substance.