Laypersons vs. specialists

[Sanford Levinson]

I don't think that legislators or courts *must* defer to experts.  I made my
point in the context of Rick's defense of creationists on the grounds that
they've "considered all of the evidence"?

Sandy

Eugene wrote:


>    But do scientists have a *constitutionally* privileged status?
>If the great majority of biologists say that this-and-such is a
>viable scientific theory, but Phil Johnson and a bunch of legislators
>disagree, must courts defer to the biologists?  Or should they
>find the biological facts themselves?  Or should they conclude that,
>regardless of how much more reliable we normally find biologists to
>be, legislatures may not be required to defer to the biologists'
>judgment?
>
>Sandy Levinson writes:
>
>> I'm not sure what Rick means by saying they've "considered all of the
>> evidence."  Do they have Ph.D.s in biology, etc?  I'm not saying that they
>> should.  I'm really raising (yet once more) the question of when we allow
>> laypersons--and surely Phil Johnson is, from the perspective of
>> disciplinarily trained scientists a layperson unworthy of being taken
>> seriously, just as (most) law professors are unwilling to accept as fully
>> legitimate the legal pronouncements even of political scientists if they
>> lack the J.D.--to participate as genuine equals in a conversation and when
>> we properly dismiss them as ignoramuses.  No one has enough time in the day
>> (or in a life) to consider more than the merest fraction of the evidence in
>> regard to more than one or two areas of inquiry.  Otherwise, we express our
>> faith in a structure of organized knowledge by saying (something like) "if
>> Steve Weinberg accepts this as the best account of the first three minutes,
>> that's good enough for me," or if the National Academy of Sciences, after
>> full vetting of an issue, declares that global warming is a reality, that's
>> good enough for me, and so on.
>>
>> Sandy Levinson
>>
>
>
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>Eugene Volokh, UCLA Law School, (310) 206-3926  fax -7010
>               405 Hilgard Ave., L.A., CA 90095
>