Should Any Court Accept the “Social Authority” Paradigm?

Monahan and Walker have proposed that American judges should fundamentally alter the way they receive and assess social science evidence in court, by treating social science research as “law-like” or authoritative when certain professional research criteria are met. Strict application of the stipulated criteria to various kinds of social science research introduced into American and Canadian courts reveals, however, that such research can seldom be considered authoritative in the way Monahan and Walker imagine. Accordingly, as a general rule judges should be reluctant to apply Monahan and Walker’s “social authority” model to the courtroom resolution of difficult questions of social, economic, and cultural or historical facts.