Law’s Virtues: Fostering Autonomy and Solidarity in American Society

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Law and its Limits: Ethical Issues in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus

The law and literature movement is frequently associated with the use of literary images of law as a point of reflection upon the ethical obligations of lawyers. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)—the story of a young scientist whose unorthodox experiments end up creating the famed “monster”—is not, at first glance, a likely candidate for that enterprise. However, Dr. Frankenstein’s ambition and ruthless pursuit of knowledge has become a contemporary image of science out of control and the need for ethical limitations on scientific progress. Consequently, the novel raises currently important issues of regulating science and technology. Given the lawyer’s ethical obligation to work for the improvement of the law, is Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) and the trend toward automated decision-making in legal contexts, the professions own out of control “monster?” Shelley’s novel includes depictions of injustice in unsympathetic criminal courts: two innocent characters are condemned to death, one on weak evidence and one for his religious beliefs alone, while another has his property cruelly confiscated. While Frankenstein raises issues pertaining to “Big E” ethics—such as the responsibility of lawyers for law reform and justice in society—it also engages our everyday concerns for injustice as reflected in relevant judicial codes of ethics and rules of professional conduct

Arsenic and Old Chemistry: Images of Mad Alchemists, Experts Attacking Experts, and the Crisis in Forensic Science

Drawing on research into the use of experts in early 19th-century criminal trials, the image of mad alchemists in popular culture representations of science, and the distinction between empirical and contingent “interpretive repertoires” in the discourse of scientific controversies, this article explores the controversy over arsenic-detection technologies prior to the Marsh test. In addition to noting the predictable criticism of incompetent expertise in the service of law, this article highlights implied accusations of hubris and amorality on the part of over-confident experts, both in the early 19th-century and in today\u27s crisis of forensic science