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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Science on Law's Terms: Implications of Procedural Legitimacy on Scientific Evidence

Acharya, Nayha 13 August 2012 (has links)
Scientific evidence is increasingly relied on in litigation. Discussions and debates aimed at enabling courts to make the best use scientific evidence are therefore critical. This thesis adds the perspective of procedural legitimacy to the science and law dialogue. Procedural Legitimacy is the concept that consistent adherence to legal procedure maintains the overall legitimacy of the legal system, and the validity of its outcomes. I argue that to maintain legitimate legal outcomes, procedural rules must be applied consistently and vigilantly to scientific evidence. This means that admissibility rules must be applied properly to scientific evidence, and that admitted scientific evidence must be duly scrutinized and weighed against the legal standard of proof. This ensures that the legal outcome will be based on valid legal facts. When the law is applied to those legal facts, litigants are legitimately bound by the judicial decision, despite the risk of factual inaccuracy. / The bulk of this thesis develops the notion of procedural legitimacy, and argues that its role in the adjudicative process is vital. The argument is founded on the conditions of uncertainty in which legal decisions are made. I show that both liability determinations and damages determinations in personal injury actions are made in conditions of uncertainty, and are dependent on consistency in procedure to maintain legitimacy. Ultimately, I apply the procedural legitimacy argument to admissibility and use of scientific evidence, and endorse the recommendations of the Goudge Inquiry in that respect.

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