UCL's Institute for Global Law / IUS Commune Lecture Series presents

Courts, Climate Expertise and Civic Epistemologies

on Thursday 19 January, from 1-2pm

Speaker:

Professor Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard University

Chair:
Dr Ioannis Lianos, UCL 

About the lecture
The role of experts in the legal process has generally been examined from the standpoint of juridical capacity to distinguish reliable from unreliable knowledge. In an era of globalization it is more important to understand how courts evaluate the universal claims of science in relation to background cultural norms of reason, demonstration, and evidence—in short, to the collective knowledge ways that Professor Jasanoff has elsewhere termed “civic epistemologies.” Using climate science as an example, she compares US and UK developments in climate law and policy to illustrate how courts reproduce the background norms of reasoning that give specificity to modern political cultures. Courts in this analysis are sites in which competing, quasi-constitutional understandings of the right relations between knowledge and power are tested and dominant ones are reaffirmed. Judicial decisions are at once markers of national difference and signposts to the epistemic habits that must be acknowledged and addressed in building common legal responses to global public problems.

About the speaker
Sheila Jasanoff is Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School. A pioneer in her field, she has authored more than 100 articles and chapters and is author or editor of a dozen books, including Controlling Chemicals, The Fifth Branch, Science at the Bar, and Designs on Nature. Her work explores the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies, with particular attention to the nature of public reason. She was founding chair of the STS Department at Cornell University and has held numerous distinguished visiting appointments in the US, Europe, and Japan. Jasanoff served on the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and as President of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Her grants and awards include a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship and an Ehrenkreuz from the Government of Austria. She holds AB, JD, and PhD degrees from Harvard, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Twente.