From the American Revolution to the genetic revolution, to race and abortion rights, legal expert David L. Faigman’s Laboratory of Justice examines the U.S. Supreme Court’s uneasy attempts to weave science into the Constitution. Suppose that scientists identify a gene that predicts that a person is likely to commit a serious crime. Laws are then passed making genetic tests mandatory, and anyone displaying the gene is sent to a treatment facility. Would the laws be constitutional? In this illuminating history, Laboratory of Justice: The Supreme Court’s 200-Year Struggle to Integrate Science and the Law, legal scholar David L. Faigman reveals the tension between the conservative nature of the law and the swift evolution of scientific knowledge. The Supreme Court works by precedent, embedding the science of an earlier time into our laws. In the nineteenth century, biology helped settle the “race question” in the famous Dred Scott case; not until a century later would cutting-edge sociological data end segregation with Brown v. Board of Education. In 1973, Roe v. Wade set a standard for the viability of a fetus that modern medicine could render obsolete. And how does the Fourth Amendment apply in a world filled with high-tech surveillance devices? To ensure our liberties, Faigman argues, the Court must embrace science, turning to the lab as well as to precedent. “Faigman takes the Supreme Court to task for persistently failing to inquire into the merits of the scientific evidence in the cases before it.”—Daniel J. Kevles, Legal Affairs “Faigman is one attorney who hasn’t shied away from insisting that judges stay up to speed with scientific knowledge.”—The Christian Science Monitor

Now in an expanded paperback edition, Innocence Project attorney M. Chris Fabricant presents an insider’s journey into the heart of a broken, racist system of justice and the role junk science plays in maintaining the status quo. "Fierce and absorbing . . . Fabricant chronicles the battles he and his colleagues have fought to unravel a century of fraudulent experts and the bad court decisions that allowed them to thrive." —Washington Post From CSI to Forensic Files to the celebrated reputation of the FBI crime lab, forensic scientists have long been mythologized in American popular culture as infallible crime solvers. Juries put their faith in "expert witnesses" and innocent people have been executed as a result. Innocent people are still on death row today, condemned by junk science. In 2012, the Innocence Project began searching for prisoners convicted by junk science, and three men, each convicted of capital murder, became M. Chris Fabricant's clients. Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System chronicles the fights to overturn their wrongful convictions and to end the use of the "science" that destroyed their lives. Weaving together courtroom battles from Mississippi to Texas to New York City and beyond, Fabricant takes the reader on a journey into the heart of a broken, racist system of justice and the role forensic science plays in maintaining the status quo. At turns gripping, enraging, illuminating, and moving, Junk Science is a meticulously researched insider's perspective of the American criminal justice system. Previously untold stories of wrongful executions, corrupt prosecutors, and quackery masquerading as science animate Fabricant’s true crime narrative. The paperback edition features a brand-new index as well as an updated introduction and final chapter chronicling the Innocence Project’s continued fight against junk science in courtrooms across America.

Examining how international criminal law has—and hasn't—brought justice following war crimes in Africa Ever since World War II, the United Nations and other international actors have created laws, treaties, and institutions to punish perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. These efforts have established universally recognized norms and have resulted in several high-profile convictions in egregious cases. But international criminal justice now seems to be a declining force—its energy sapped by long delays in prosecutions, lagging public attention, and a globally rising authoritarianism that disregards legal niceties. This book reviews five examples of international criminal justice as they have been applied across Africa, where brutal civil conflicts in recent decades resulted in varying degrees of global attention and action. The first three chapters examine key international mechanisms: the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the hybrid tribunal established in Senegal to try state crimes committed in Chad. These chapters illustrate how the design and practice of the institutions led to similarly unexpected and unsatisfying outcomes. The final two chapters examine emerging and proposed international criminal justice mechanisms. One is a tribunal intended to facilitate peace in the new but war-torn country of South Sudan, not yet operational and unlikely to perform better than its predecessors. Finally, the book considers the developing human rights practice of the little-studied East African Court, a regional commercial court in Arusha, Tanzania, to show how local judicial creativity can win a role for courts in facilitating good governance. Written in an accessible style, this book explores the connections between politics and the doctrine of international criminal law. Highlighting little-known institutional examples and under-discussed political situations, the book contributes to a broader international understanding of African politics and international criminal justice, as well as the lessons the African experiences offer for other regions.

Revised edition of the authors' Criminal justice, 2013.

Uniting forensics, law, and social science in meaningful and relevant ways, Forensic Science and the Administration of Justice, by Kevin J. Strom and Matthew J. Hickman, is structured around current research on how forensic evidence is being used and how it is impacting the justice system. This unique book—written by nationally known scholars in the field—includes five sections that explore the demand for forensic services, the quality of forensic services, the utility of forensic services, post-conviction forensic issues, and the future role of forensic science in the administration of justice. The authors offer policy-relevant directions for both the criminal justice and forensic fields and demonstrate how the role of the crime laboratory in the American justice system is evolving in concert with technological advances as well as changing demands and competing pressures for laboratory resources.