Academic

Pease on Lands Council v. McNair

By Lawrence Solum

Craig M. Pease (Vermont Law School) has posted It's Owls All the Way Down (Environmental Forum, p.18, May 2009) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In Lands Council v. McNair, the scientific question presented was whether Forest Service analysts employed a reliable methodology when they drew inferences about owls, using data from the trees of their old-growth habitat. Often in science, it is better to have a lot of good data addressing a proxy question (how logging affects trees), as opposed to fewer poor data directly addressing the question of interest (how logging affects owls). Models are also central to the law. When lawyers focus on procedural claims and purely legal questions, they are only doing what scientists themselves do - using models to evade hard scientific questions.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on September 04, 2009 (boomark / email).