Scientific Objects and Legal Objectivity

(88)
Scientific Objects and Legal Objectivity application/pdf icon
2002

A chapter of La Fabrique du droit translated by Alain Pottage in Law, Anthropology and the Constitution of the Social : Making Persons and Things, Alain Pottage and Martha Mondy (editors), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.73-113, 2004

Abstract

A comparative ethnography of fact-making in science and judgment-making in law may allow to separate again what has been mixed up in the traditional definition of matter of fact: an ability to close up the discussion and an ability to produce proofs by enticing objects to bear witness on what is said about them. There is objectivity in both but one refers to a mental attitude of indifference to the solution while the other -objectity- refers to the many intimate and even passionnate contacts with the state of affairs at hand. It would surely be advantageous to distinguish again refererential chains of science and the very peculiar type of closure of law.

Translations

Chinois / Chinese
In « Jianghai Acdamic Journal »