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Stoett reviews 'Our Children's Toxic Legacy: How Science and Law Fail to Protect Us from Pesticides' by John Wargo.

As a result of intensive international debate and the adoption of a number of renowned international anticorruption conventions and initiatives in the 1990s and 2000s, the issue of corruption has become a convenient theme for different kinds of generalizations in social sciences. However, national legislation does not reflect these developments in its legal regulation due to conservatism inherent in jurisprudence. One of the most evident gaps in this respect is the sphere of political corruption. While political science and political economy for decades have been successful in explaining political processes in different countries as corrupt conspiracies of political elites, business structures, and other actors in the political process, legal science has kept itself separate from such problems and prefers to deal with individual acts of corruption. But if for criminal law such an approach seems logical due to the methodology of the criminal law, for other branches of law which set forth a systemic view on social processes – primarily administrative and constitutional – there seems to be an omission.Nowadays, there is a quite favourable environment for the development of a consistent legal understanding of anticorruption in Russia. This has become possible thanks to current Russian administrative reforms, when the need for a highly professional bureaucracy led to a greater demand for various anticorruption mechanisms. The next possible step in Russia may be an attempt to ensure the effectiveness of well-proven anti-corruption methods of the political system as a whole.In this article we propose a brief background to the evolution of the concept of political corruption in Western and Russian political and legal science, which entails the necessity of complex scientific legal synthesis on this issue, allows to discuss the existing methodological potential and creates new opportunities to build up appropriate systemic legislative models. ; As a result of intensive international debate and the adoption of a number of renowned international anticorruption conventions and initiatives in the 1990s and 2000s, the issue of corruption has become a convenient theme for different kinds of generalizations in social sciences. However, national legislation does not reflect these developments in its legal regulation due to conservatism inherent in jurisprudence. One of the most evident gaps in this respect is the sphere of political corruption. While political science and political economy for decades have been successful in explaining political processes in different countries as corrupt conspiracies of political elites, business structures, and other actors in the political process, legal science has kept itself separate from such problems and prefers to deal with individual acts of corruption. But if for criminal law such an approach seems logical due to the methodology of the criminal law, for other branches of law which set forth a systemic view on social processes – primarily administrative and constitutional – there seems to be an omission.Nowadays, there is a quite favourable environment for the development of a consistent legal understanding of anticorruption in Russia. This has become possible thanks to current Russian administrative reforms, when the need for a highly professional bureaucracy led to a greater demand for various anticorruption mechanisms. The next possible step in Russia may be an attempt to ensure the effectiveness of well-proven anti-corruption methods of the political system as a whole.In this article we propose a brief background to the evolution of the concept of political corruption in Western and Russian political and legal science, which entails the necessity of complex scientific legal synthesis on this issue, allows to discuss the existing methodological potential and creates new opportunities to build up appropriate systemic legislative models.

In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court made its first major pronouncement on the evaluation of scientific evidence, calling on judges to act as gatekeepers for scientific knowledge and validity, despite lack of scientific training among judges. Daubert offers the science studies community a case study for examining how judges (and scientists acting as experts) engage in boundary-work and construct scientific validity. In constructing scientific validity under Daubert, judges must evaluate the scientific method behind a particular scientific claim, and will look to the parties' experts and the relevant scientific community for assistance. To combat the oft-cited problem of the battle of the experts, judges may be tempted to obtain assistance from court-appointed neutral experts, an inquisitorial (rather than adversarial) system in the civil law tradition of many European countries. The judicial evaluation of scientific evidence, the resulting construction of scientific validity, and the push for a greater use of court-appointed experts reveal judges' desire to segregate "objective" scientific facts from aspects of the legal process that are infused with adversaries' values. Yet the scientific and judicial construction of validity mixes empirical results and research methods with the personal, political, and institutional values of judges and scientists.

Although science and law employ different methods to gather and weigh evidence, their conclusions are remarkably convergent with regard to the effect that workplace stress has on the health of employees. Science, using the language of probability, affirms that certain stressors predict adverse health outcomes such as disabling anxiety and depression, cardiovascular disease, certain types of injury, and a variety of immune system disorders. Law, using the language of reasonable foreseeability, affirms that these adverse outcomes are predictable under certain conditions, typically defined in relation to what a reasonable person should know. Society is arguably in a position to establish standards for the abatement of certain types of workplace stress. As part of this process, we need to conceptualize an ideal form of conduct that exemplifies the standards to which both law and science urge us to aspire. For this purpose, the concept of the neighbor at work is proposed.