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Speaking Truth and Power

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Jonathan Simon
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Extract

It is, I suspect, no accident that it was a breakthrough in physics that caused Kitty Calavita (2002) to reflect on the need for law and society scholars to engage in acts of public discourse and aspire to become public intellectuals. Substantively, physics may be an unlikely source of theoretical help to law and society scholarship, but no discipline better epitomizes the role of science as a practical aspect of power and governance since the mid-20th century. I would suggest that we follow Calavita's meditation not to develop our envy of the methods and theories of physics, but to develop our reflexivity concerning the dangerous role of physicists as “enablers” of power. (Think J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, not Einstein and the General Theory of Relativity.)

Type
Presidential Address and Commentaries
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , 2002 , pp. 37 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Law and Society Association.

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References

References

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Sources Cited

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