A sociology of law and science

In this chapter, we interrogate how the interactions between law and science have been approached by the social sciences. In the last three decades in particular, these interactions have been a growing focus of academic interest (Cole 2016; Caudill and Larue 2006; Silbey 2008 and 2008b). An increasing body of inter- and transdisciplinary empirical research and novel theorisation has sought to inspect and unpack how law and science, as institutions and bodies of knowledge, shape contemporary societies (Pottage 1998; Strathern 2019). In particular, research has engaged closely with how the interactions between law and science act as accelerants of material and semiotic innovation (Silbey and Ewick 2003; Hayden 2003; Jacob 2012). Yet, it is probably fair to say that these questions have not been as central to the sociology of law as one may expect, emerging instead as a distinct, though overlapping, sub-field of inquiry.