After court cases seeking to halt the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were thrown out of Swiss and Hawaiian law courts, one US lawyer is arguing that it and other hypothetically destructive experiments should not expect to be beyond the rule of law.
In February’s Physics World, journalist Edwin Cartlidge looks at the argument put forward by lawyer Eric E Johnson in the Tennessee Law Review that courts must assert their jurisdiction over these large experiments — or face rendering the rule of law obsolete.
Two of the most significant obstacles to the rule of law are the international composition of the experiments, which makes it hard for national courts to pass judgement, and the complexity of the science, which those in the courtroom cannot be expected to master.
CERN has twice carried out reviews of the LHC, confirming that the LHC is safe, and Johnson admits he has no wish to “engender fear” or pander to “frivolous objectors”. Instead, he wants to identify the “human factors” that could be used by courts to rule on the legality of these complex experiments.
These include the extent to which the theories underlying the “safety case” are well established or still the subject of debate. Another is the possibility that scientists may be predisposed to believing that their experiments, on which billions of dollars have been spent, could not wreak havoc. Johnson also thinks that CERN’s safety reviews could have been weakened a conflict of interest: the panel carrying out its second review included only one outsider.
CERN communications chief James Gillies, however, insists that the lab’s safety analyses have been rigorously reviewed. Moreover, a similar experiment at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US has run for almost a decade without incident.
However, Adrian Kent, a physicist at Cambridge University in the UK, would prefer any such experiment to be risk-assessed by independent experts before it is built – rather than by ad hoc panels set up in response to media interest – and to only go ahead if the risk is less than that which scientists deem acceptable. “But whether this approach is necessary – and indeed practicable – remains an open question,” he says.
Also in the February edition, which is a special issue examining some of the key topics in complexity and network science:
is human mobility governed by fundamental physical laws? Tracking dollar bills and hunting for hidden treasures may seem like unusual pastimes for physicists — but data derived from such pursuits can reveal patterns in how people travel
the flu fighters – quick and easy global air travel aids the spread of infectious diseases and makes modelling them a complicated task. But physicists are making progress thanks to tools from statistical mechanics and network science
The law and the Large Hadron Collider: who should have jurisdiction?
In February’s issue of Physics World…
After court cases seeking to halt the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were thrown out of Swiss and Hawaiian law courts, one US lawyer is arguing that it and other hypothetically destructive experiments should not expect to be beyond the rule of law.
In February’s Physics World, journalist Edwin Cartlidge looks at the argument put forward by lawyer Eric E Johnson in the Tennessee Law Review that courts must assert their jurisdiction over these large experiments — or face rendering the rule of law obsolete.
Two of the most significant obstacles to the rule of law are the international composition of the experiments, which makes it hard for national courts to pass judgement, and the complexity of the science, which those in the courtroom cannot be expected to master.
CERN has twice carried out reviews of the LHC, confirming that the LHC is safe, and Johnson admits he has no wish to “engender fear” or pander to “frivolous objectors”. Instead, he wants to identify the “human factors” that could be used by courts to rule on the legality of these complex experiments.
These include the extent to which the theories underlying the “safety case” are well established or still the subject of debate. Another is the possibility that scientists may be predisposed to believing that their experiments, on which billions of dollars have been spent, could not wreak havoc. Johnson also thinks that CERN’s safety reviews could have been weakened a conflict of interest: the panel carrying out its second review included only one outsider.
CERN communications chief James Gillies, however, insists that the lab’s safety analyses have been rigorously reviewed. Moreover, a similar experiment at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US has run for almost a decade without incident.
However, Adrian Kent, a physicist at Cambridge University in the UK, would prefer any such experiment to be risk-assessed by independent experts before it is built – rather than by ad hoc panels set up in response to media interest – and to only go ahead if the risk is less than that which scientists deem acceptable. “But whether this approach is necessary – and indeed practicable – remains an open question,” he says.
Also in the February edition, which is a special issue examining some of the key topics in complexity and network science:
is human mobility governed by fundamental physical laws? Tracking dollar bills and hunting for hidden treasures may seem like unusual pastimes for physicists — but data derived from such pursuits can reveal patterns in how people travel
the flu fighters – quick and easy global air travel aids the spread of infectious diseases and makes modelling them a complicated task. But physicists are making progress thanks to tools from statistical mechanics and network science