What can Science do for the Law?

✍ Scribed by David Patterson

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 1975
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 459 KB
• Volume: 15
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0015-7368
• DOI: 10.1016/s0015-7368(75)71018-6

✦ Synopsis

I n return for presiding in as impartial as possible a manner over the meetings of the Council of the Forensic Science Society, it was decided some three years ago that the President should be given the opportunity, in alternate years, of delivering to the Annual Meeting of the Society a Presidential Address. The first of these was duly given two years ago by my predecessor in this office, Dr. Julius Grant, and the subject he chose was Towards a New Profession? a title which he posed as a question. Now, one of the advantages of being an early speaker in such a series is that one is not restricted by the need to avoid topics that have been chosen by earlier Presidents. I have therefore selected the title also in the form of a question: What can Science do for the Law? This is indeed a very wide subject and I shall confine my remarks to a brief review of the period since the Society was formed in 1959, together with an attempt to look a little into the future.

Both in my University employment, and as a magistrate, I am unused to consulting higher authority before expressing my opinions, since academic freedom and the independence of the judiciary are cornerstones of the pattern of British society. Neither can I claim to have consulted the Council of the Forensic Science Society as to what I should say, because I regard the independence of such scientific societies as ours, as of fundamental importance to the continuing health of Science and the development of our democracy, and this requires that there must always be on hand challenges to the existing orthodoxy in Science and in Government. For better or for worse then, what I am about to say is entirely at my own responsibility.

In the opening address which I gave at the inaugural meeting of the Forensic