Upcoming Special Journal Issue on Science and the Courts

I was contacted a little while ago by e-mail by someone from the University of Ottawa Law & Technology Journal about their upcoming Special Issue on Science and the Courts.

Here is the message:

"The University of Ottawa Law & Technology Journal invites original scholarly articles for a special issue on Science and the Courts to be published in 2008. The University of Ottawa Law & Technology Journal (UOLTJ) is an open access, bilingual (English and French), faculty-run, peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to scholarly articles on law and technology. The special issue on Science and the Courts seeks to include a broad range of subject areas and perspectives and seeks representation from authors drawn from science, law (including judges, lawyers, and academics), and related disciplines. Suggested topics include electronic evidence, the role of the expert witness, novel science and the courts, the specialized court, patent litigation, nanotechnology, legal history of science and the courts, product liability, juries and science, DNA, science and mass torts, neutral science advisors to a court, and the interaction between emerging scientific research and legal precedent on cases involving science. The Journal is also open to considering submissions on any other aspect of the intersection between science and the courts. The deadline for submissions is March 1, 2008".

"General Issues: The Journal also continues to invite submissions of original scholarly articles in English or in French for publication in its peer-reviewed general issues, which will be considered on a rolling basis. For its general issues, the Journal is interested in work on all aspects of the field of law and technology, regardless of the type of technology, substantive area of law at issue, or theoretical or philosophical focus. The Journal considers scholarship on the intersection of law with established or emerging technologies in any field, such as computer, internet and e-commerce law; privacy; intellectual property; technology and ethics; communications, entertainment, and social media; natural sciences; traditional knowledge; evidence; cybercrime; security; internet governance; and e-government. The Journal publishes articles on law and technology written by scholars from a range of disciplines and encourages submissions of interdisciplinary work. All articles submitted to the Journal are evaluated through a peer review process before being accepted for publication".

"The Journal publishes two peer-reviewed issues annually and is available both in print and electronic formats. The current and past contents of the UOLTJ are freely available online on the Journal's websites, http://www.uoltj.ca/ (in English) and www.rdtuo.ca (in French). The Journal is also carried in HeinOnline, LexisNexis, Westlaw, and LexisNexis Quicklaw, and indexed in the Index to Canadian Legal Literature, the Index to Canadian Intellectual Property Literature, and OpenJ-Gate. In addition, the full-text of the Journal is available on the Social Science Research Network, the Directory of Open Access Journals and the digital collection of the Library and Archives Canada. As a member of Open Access Law Canada, the UOLTJ has made a firm commitment to advancing the free public accessibility of legal information. The Journal's publication agreement is available for consultation on the website http://www.uoltj.ca/copyright.php. In addition to publishing in an open access format, the Journal supports the use of free public online sources of legislation and case law by including citations to public online sources".

Earlier Library Boy posts on the topic of science and the law include:

• Allan Legere Digital Archive - 1st Serial Killer Convicted by DNA Typing (April 24, 2006): "The Gerard V. La Forest Law Library at the University of New Brunswick yesterday launched a digital archive of documents and images related to the crimes, capture and trial of Allan Joseph Legere (...)His trial in 1991 was the first in which the new science of DNA typing was used to obtain a criminal conviction in Canada and was therefore a landmark in Canadian legal history"
• Science and Law Resources (August 21, 2006): "Last week, the Science & Law Blog was launched. In the introductory post, the authors, all law professors, explained that their blog is devoted to 'the single question of how does, and how should, courts and policy makers use the more or less certain findings (or lack of findings) from science when making decisions'."
• Update on Science and Law Resources (August 26, 2006): "A recent article from LLRX.com - It’s Not Rocket Science: Making Sense of Scientific Evidence - explains how common web search engines as well as specialized engines that explore the 'Deep Web' can be used to find material on the reliability of scientific evidence in the legal context."
• Articles on Scientific Evidence in Newest Issue of Judicature (December 5, 2006): "The most recent volume of Judicature, the journal of the American Judicature Society, proposes a series of articles on how courts should deal with issues relating to scientific evidence."
• How Far Should Judges Go In Researching Science? (January 29, 2007): "In a recent article, Jacqueline Cantwell, who works at the Brooklyn Supreme Court Law Library in the U.S., raises some important issues about how much independent research judges should be allowed to conduct when trying cases involving complex scientific evidence."