Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
guarantor of the stability of the social order, it also sought to assure its
citizen-subjects of the reliability (and enforceability) of written contracts,”
and handwriting expertise provided a key element of that reliability. 57
Indeed, even though the methods of handwriting expertise never
matured sufficiently to garner the respectability due to a properly scientific
forensic method, this was not in and of itself a fundamental problem. Most
of the time, handwriting analysis worked well enough, “If by 'worked' one
means that it bolstered judgments from the magistrate's bench by appeal-
ing to the impartiality of science (without necessarily offering any of the
public accountability or reproducibility that the term “science” usually
implies). For this reason, the experts' reports were a powerful tool which
the magistrates kept under their discretionary control—to confirm judg-
ments they sought on other grounds.” 58 For this reason, the failure of
handwriting experts to meet modern scientific criteria did not disqualify
it as a useful adjunct to the judicial process, insofar as it served to reinforce
that most essential element of a judge's decision: its legitimacy.
It is of course tempting to impute this to just another example of “junk
science,” the historical failure of the legal process to require and match the
exacting standards of the scientific method, perhaps combined with a case
of, you know, “ the French . . . ” This is indeed a position adopted by some
scholars:
It is not surprising that the foundations of today's “science” handwriting analysis
came out of 19th century Continental thought. Western Europe was then a hotbed
of extreme rationalism on the fringes of science, where theories were spun out to
satisfyingly mystical complexity and experience was expected to conform or be
damned. The same intellectual climate that gave us phrenology, Lombrosian physi-
ognomy and, as previously noted, “graphology,” gave us “chirography,” or hand-
writing identification as a “science.” 59
Yet dubious but widely accepted forensic sciences are not exclusive to
the French: the lie detector has enjoyed a successful career in American
courts (and in the public imagination), despite a similarly dubious scien-
tific foundation. 60
In the final analysis, just like handwriting expertise, the presumptions
of trustworthiness advocated by both the ABA and the Conseil d'état deal
in the currency of legitimacy. As expressions of dominant norms, presump-
tions and the judicial decisions based on them draw their legitimacy from
the standardization of social relations. By reversing the burden of proof,
Search WWH ::




Custom Search