Epistemic Institutions: Law's Encounters with Knowledge
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Epistemic Institutions: Law’s Encounters with Knowledge By James Dillon A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Jurisprudence and Social Policy in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Malcolm M. Feeley, Chair Professor Andrea L. Roth Professor Amy E. Lerman Summer 2018 Abstract Epistemic Institutions: Law’s Encounters with Knowledge by James Dillon Doctor of Philosophy in Jurisprudence and Social Policy University of California, Berkeley Professor Malcolm M. Feeley, Chair This dissertation examines the construction of “legal knowledge”—the finding of facts to which legal norms are to be applied in the adjudication of disputes—from an interdisciplinary perspective emphasizing epistemology, the sociology of scientific knowledge, political theory, and cognitive psychology. While the construction of legal knowledge is an essential component of the legal process and the principal task of American trial courts, the process remains fraught with practical and theoretical challenges that complicate simplistic conceptions of factfinding as a transparent process of veridical reconstruction of past events. Legal epistemic agents, like all epistemic agents, lack direct access to past events; thus, legal knowledge cannot perceive the past directly, but can only interpret it. The process of legal factfinding inevitably creates distortions and is subject to systemic biases in its effort to create a veridical construct of past events giving rise to a legal dispute. Although this dissertation cannot address every under-explored problem concerning the legitimacy and reliability of legal knowledge construction, its principal contribution is to bring interdisciplinary insights to bear on several of the more salient unresolved problems around the law’s engagement with knowledge claims and the construction of legal knowledge through the adversarial process. The dissertation examines both practical and normative concerns regarding the construction of legal knowledge and its legitimacy as state-backed orthodoxy. It first asks whether judges’ performance as factfinders is consistent with courts’ claims of superlative judicial competence and objectivity vis-à-vis jurors. Second, the dissertation examines one area in which legal factfinders, both judges and jurors, have a notoriously poor record of reliable knowledge construction: the interpretation and application of scientific expert testimony to the resolution of legal disputes. Finally, the dissertation examines the legitimacy of legal factfinding in a liberal democratic society characterized by entrenched disagreement concerning matters of empirical fact through the lens of John Rawls’s work on political liberalism. 1 The dissertation concludes that legal factfinding faces myriad practical and normative challenges that defy simple solutions, but that progress can be made toward the law’s epistemic goals by applying relevant insights from the social sciences, philosophy, and political theory. It finds that three themes cut across all of the law’s epistemic difficulties—the epistemic limitations of human decision makers, the social entrenchment of empirical disagreement, and the promise and limitations of systems-based reforms to improving the veridicality of legal knowledge—and suggests further engagement with these themes as the foundation of a new research agenda applying interdisciplinary insights to problems in the construction of legal knowledge. 2 To Rachel. i Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 Problems of Competence and Legitimacy in the Construction of Legal Knowledge ................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 2 Epistemic Exceptionalism in Judicial Factfinding ................................................... 6 I. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 6 II. Epistemic Exceptionalism in Evidence and Civil Procedure ....................................... 8 A. Evidentiary Double Standards .............................................................................. 8 B. Complexity Exceptions to the Seventh Amendment ............................................ 16 III. Are Judges Epistemically Exceptional? ............................................................... 18 A. Cognitive Exceptionality ...................................................................................... 19 B. Complexity and Epistemic Competence .............................................................. 27 IV. Mitigating Epistemic Exceptionalism .................................................................. 32 A. Institutional Logic of Epistemic Exceptionalism ................................................. 32 B. Correcting the Problem: A Three-Tiered Approach ............................................ 34 V. Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 42 Chapter 3 Epistemic Competence and Institutional Cognition: The Need for an Epistemological Paradigm Shift in Courts’ Engagement with Scientific Expertise ........... 44 I. Courts, Scientific Evidence, and the Need for an Institutional Epistemological Perspective .......................................................................................... 44 II. The Doctrinal Framework of Law’s Encounters with Scientific Expertise ........................................................................................................................ 47 A. Qualification of Expert Witnesses ........................................................................ 47 B. Gatekeeping: Assessing the Reliability of Expert Methodology ........................ 49 C. Factfinding ........................................................................................................... 54 III. Intellectual Due Process and the Intractable Problem of Epistemic Competence.................................................................................................................... 56 A. The Normative Stakes of Epistemic Competence ................................................ 57 B. Epistemological Foundations of Epistemic Competence ..................................... 58 C. Empirical Studies of Epistemic Competence ....................................................... 62 D. Prior Reform Proposals ........................................................................................ 69 IV. Designing Competent Courts ............................................................................... 73 A. The Failure of Brewer’s Two Hat Solution .......................................................... 73 B. Social Epistemological Approaches: Avoiding the Atomization Trap ............... 75 V. Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 91 Chapter 4 Public Reason and Political Legitimacy in Legal Factfinding: The Case of Legal Challenges to Mandatory Vaccination Policies .................................................................. 93 I. The Problems of Normative and Epistemic Pluralism ................................................... 96 A. Normative Pluralism and the Overlapping Consensus ......................................... 96 B. Epistemic Pluralism: An Omission from Rawls’s Account ................................. 99 II. Legal Challenges to Mandatory Vaccination Policies ................................................. 105 A. History of Mandatory Vaccination Policies ......................................................... 107 B. Normative and Epistemic Pluralism in the Antivaccination Movement .............. 109 C. Judicial Responses to Legal Challenges to Mandatory Vaccination Policies ...... 122 D. Legislative Accommodation of Normative Pluralism .......................................... 126 III. Pluralism and Realism: Rationalizing the Normative/Epistemic ii Divide in Law and Theory ............................................................................................. 128 A. Mandatory Vaccination and the Rawlsian Legitimacy Problem: The Failure of Epistemic Reasonableness ............................................................ 128 B. Moral Realism and Anti-Realism in Law and Theory: Alternative Rationales for Normative and Empirical Accommodation .................................. 132 IV. Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 140 V. Post Script: A Note of Caution ..................................................................................... 145 Chapter 5 An Agenda for the Study of Legal Knowledge Construction…………………….. 148 I. The Epistemic Limitations of Human Decision Makers ................................................ 148 II. The Social Entrenchment of Empirical Disagreement ................................................. 149 III. The Utility and Limitations of Systems-Based Reforms to Improving the Veridicality Of Legal Knowledge ............................................................................ 151 References…………………………………………………………………………………….153 iii Chapter 1 Problems of Competence and Legitimacy in the Construction of Legal