Book Reviews : Carol A. Jones, Expert Witnesses: Science, Medicine, and the Practice of Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, 281pp

Published date01 December 1995
DOI10.1177/096466399500400420
AuthorJenny Mcewan
Date01 December 1995
Subject MatterArticles
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activists to follow the comparable worth route once it gained the imprimatur of legal
legitimacy from the Supreme Court in Gunther tended to push alternative strategies for
achieving pay equity to the margin of political debate. Increased unionization of women
workers, collective bargaining strategies which emphasize wage solidarity, labour law
reforms which restrict the exercise of managerial prerogatives and enhance the collective
power of workers are other policies which could improve women workers’ wages. While
subordinate in liberal political discourse, freedom of association, democratic decision-
making and a critique of unequal power relations are important counter-hegemonic
themes within it. Whether, and to what extent, legal discourses and institutions are
permeable to such aspirations are important questions which McCann’s legal mobiliz-
ation framework does not address. That law’s ability to displace other radical traditions
within American politics may be reinforced by strengthening legal consciousness is not
seriously analyzed in the legal mobilization framework because of McCann’s emphasis
upon the hegemony of legal discourse. Despite this quiddity, Rtghts at Work is a
sophisticated and an important contribution to the ongoing debate about the potential for
and limits to legal discourse and litigation in the struggle for social transformation.
JUDY
FUDGE
Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Canada
CAROL A. JONES, Expert Witnesses: Science, Medicine, and the Practice of Law. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1994, 281pp.
The author is a sociologist claiming to have produced the first comprehensive socio-legal
analysis of experts in the legal system. Her theme is that lawyers and scientists each have an
interest in representing their fields of expertise and activity in a falsely positivist,
non-subjective light. Both espouse a fact/value dichotomy to show themselves as neutral
and detached, so that their conclusions appear to have objective status with...

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