Science and law: contrasts and cooperation

• Author: Lord Neuberger
• Pages: 579-586

FRONTIERS OF LAW IN CHINA

VOL. 11 DECEMBER 2016 NO. 4

DOI 10.3868/s050-005-016-0034-0

SPECIAL SPEECH

SCIENCE AND LAW: CONTRASTS AND COOPERATION

Lord Neu berg er *

It is a great honor and a great pleasure to be asked to speak here at the famous

Renmin University, which is not only one of China’s great universities, but one of the

world’s leading universities. Renmin University has many distinguished faculties and

maintains collaborative relationships with many well-known universities around the

world, including our King’s College in London. As President of the Supreme Court of the

UK, I am of course a lawyer, and have spent over forty years in the law, the first half as a

practicing advocate, the second half as a judge. So, when I address you on the topic of

contrasts and cooperation between science and law I am more at home when talking

about the law. Nonetheless, I know a little about science.

At school and at University I studied chemistry; I even carried out research into the

artificial synthesis of insulin. I was not very good at it, and in due course I turned to law,

which suited me better. I have nonetheless maintained an educated if amateur interest in

science throughout my career in the law. This interest has led me to think about the

contrasts, similarities, and overlaps between science and law. I would like to talk to you

about two aspects of this today. The first is somewhat philosophical and it concerns the

differences and similarities between scientific thought and legal thought. The second is

rather more practical and it concerns the relationship between science and law in practice.

So far as the thought processes are concerned, most scientific problems seem to have

objectively verifiable, binary, solutions. The answer to a question involving Newton’s

laws of motion or the laws of thermodynamics is universal and timeless: It is the same

whether you are in Beijing today or you were on the moon 2,000 years ago. So, at least

for students taking exams, there is an independently verifiable right answer for the great

majority of scientific problems and questions.

Legal issues are very different. A student’s answers may seem right or wrong to an

examiner, but law does not have the discipline of objectively verifiable answers. And

unlike the laws of thermodynamics or of motion in science, legal rules are far from

timeless. Fundamental legal rights which are taken for granted in England today would

have seemed alien, or at the very least controversial, to an Englishman 400 years ago, let

* Lord Neuberger, The Rt Hon Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, President of the UK Supreme Court,

London, UK. Contact: cclruc@126.com