Fitting Science Into Legal Contexts

Law and science share many perspectives, but they also differ in important ways. While much of science is concerned with the effects of causes (EoC), relying upon evidence accumulated from randomized controlled experiments and observational studies, the problem of inferring the causes of effects (CoE) requires its own framing and possibly different data. Philosophers have written about the need to distinguish between the “EoC†and “the CoE†for hundreds of years, but their advice remains murky even today. The statistical literature is only of limited help here as well, focusing largely on the traditional problem of the “EoC.†Through a series of examples, we review the two concepts, how they are related, and how they differ. We provide an alternative framing of the “CoE†that differs substantially from that found in the bulk of the scientific literature, and in legal cases and commentary on them. Although in these few pages we cannot fully resolve this issue, we hope to begin to sketch a blueprint for a solution. In so doing, we consider how causation is framed by courts and thought about by philosophers and scientists. We also endeavor to examine how law and science might better align their approaches to causation so that, in particular, courts can take better advantage of scientific expertise.