October 30, 2008 | 1:00 PM - 4:45 PM
AAAS Auditorium
Entrance at 12th and H St., NW
Washington, DC
What are the Courts to Do in the Face of Emerging Science & Technologies?
A Public Symposium Co-sponsored by
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Washington Academy of Sciences (WAS)
Visit any courtroom in the United States – state, federal, or administrative – and you’ll be impressed with how often science and technological issues play a role in the cases being tried. This is true of civil litigation – toxic torts, product liability, and patent law – as well as criminal proceedings, where evidence from forensic pathology or the DNA lab can be crucial to a determination of guilty or not guilty. Scientific, medical, and engineering experts often appear, testifying for each side in a civil suit and for the state and defendant in a criminal trial, giving complex, and often contradictory, testimony. The prevalence and importance of scientific issues in the courtroom is not only challenging to judges and juries, but verdicts that are rendered in such cases can have enormous ramifications for society as a whole. As Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer remarked at the beginning of this century, “I believe there is an increasingly important need for law to reflect sound science.” In other words, the courts should get the science right.
The challenges facing the courts in three areas of science and technology will be explored at a meeting co-sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Washington Academy of Sciences: neuroscience, digital technologies, and forensic sciences. The meeting will be held in the AAAS auditorium (entrance at 12th and H St., NW) from 1:00-4:45 pm on OCTOBER 30. The meeting is free and open to the public.
Agenda (PDF) | Speaker Biographies | News Release
AGENDA |
|
|---|---|
1:00 PM |
Welcome and Introductions |
Mark S. Frankel, AAAS |
|
1:05 PM |
Challenges for Judges |
The Honorable Barbara Rothstein, Director, Federal Judicial Center, and Judge, U.S. Federal District Court, Western District of Washington |
|
1:35 PM |
Digital Technologies in the Courts/Electronic Discovery |
The Honorable John Facciola, US Magistrate Judge, District of Columbia |
|
2:35 PM |
Break |
2:55 PM |
Neuroscience in the Courts |
Stephen J. Morse, Professor of Psychology and Law in Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania Law School |
|
3:45 PM |
Science and the Law: Reel to Real – The impact of TV’s CSI |
Catherine With, Judge Advocate US Army and Legal Counsel, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology |
|
4:35 PM |
Wrap-up |
| Mark S. Frankel | |
4:45 PM |
Adjourn |