Diritto e scienza

Starting with the origins of modern thought, the philosophical-political and legal disciplines saw the statute of science as having bases of neutrality and objectivity, which appeared irremediably lacking in political and legal systems. This conception has been accompanied by substantial a-historicity and abstraction in the way it looks at both science and law. However, the criticisms raised against this vision of science as a methodological paradigm for political and legal theories have failed to touch the hypothesis of the separateness of science, which, even within such perspectives, continues to appear as a self-contained form of knowledge. The last forty years have seen the radical subversion of the conditions which made the neutral and separate relationship between science and law tenable to be theorized. The scientific activities and products subjected to the scrutiny of law have increased exponentially, and ambits have appeared in which science has at once created risks and proved largely incapable of controlling them. The technical-scientific component has increasingly constituted the cognitive content of norms, but the number of situations is increasing in which law has to fill cognitive gaps, since scientific data prove uncertain, insufficient or susceptible to sharply diverging interpretations On the one hand, the strong presence of scientific learning in subjects of normative competence means that it is necessary to explore relationships between science and law - over and above any reflection on technical norms - as an intersection between scientific and legal concepts and qualifications. On the other, the indeterminate or uncertain character of much scientific knowledge poses the problem of which specific normative choices have to overcome the gaps left by science.