| Book Review | Law and History Review, 22.3

Book Review

John P. Jackson, Jr., Social Scientists for Social Justice: Making the Case against Segregation, New York: New York University Press, 2001. Pp. xii + 225. $40 (ISBN 0-8147-4266-1).

In Social Scientists for Social Justice, John P. Jackson, Jr. presents a provocative, albeit frustrating, analysis of social scientists' role in the landmark desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education. Jackson strives to place the social scientists "in their proper historical context" (5). Sensitivity to context, he claims, allows him to assess the objectivity of the social scientists' arguments, debunking the conventional wisdom that these experts compromised their scientific objectivity during their testimony in Brown. According to Jackson, examining the social scientists' intellectual and institutional history answers three crucial questions: how social scientists studied race and race prejudice, how they defined their role as experts, and how they attempted to be objective "when drawn into the highly adversarial process" of litigation (6). Jackson is at his best when establishing the professional and institutional histories of the social scientists. His argument that these authorities acted with "'scientific objectivity'" (5) is far less compelling.

Part I details how social scientists came to study race and race prejudice. Contending that by World War II most social scientists had abandoned the notion of biological racial hierarchy, Jackson shows how these researchers—especially at Columbia University—used a new analytic category, "culture," to uncouple race and prejudice from inborn intelligence and "instinctive" racial antipathy. Social scientists now viewed prejudice as "an irrational attitude" (41). With the advent of World War II, social scientists began to consider prejudice "dangerous and undemocratic rather than merely irrational" (43), underscoring the importance of tolerance in maintaining a stable American society. Gunnar Myrdal's 1944 classic, An American Dilemma, established this view as the liberal consensus in America.

This new orthodoxy, Jackson argues in Part II, prompted liberal social scientists to transform themselves from esoteric researchers into pragmatic engineers. Answering his second question, Jackson shows how social scientists hoped to use this redefinition of their professional role to create a more just society. Led by sociologists in the American Jewish Congress, experts concluded that, "the abolition of segregation was a necessary step to better race relations rather than a sufficient step" (74) to end all racism. To this end, social scientists desired "an almost symbiotic relationship" (78) with lawyers to battle all de jure segregation in America. Building on the rise of legal realism, social scientists believed that bringing their scientific knowledge before the courts would convince judges to rule against discriminatory policies. Researchers thus became social engineers by acting indirectly, through the legal system, to increase social justice. Surveying the pre-Brown litigation, Jackson skillfully unearths the relationship between the social scientists and the NAACP's lawyers that embodied this transformation and set the stage for Brown.

In Part III, Jackson deepens his archeology of the sociologist-lawyer partnership, illuminating their collaboration in the state and federal trials of the various cases bundled in Brown. Jackson's work on the recruitment of expert witnesses, and his recounting of their trial testimony, is interesting stuff. More significant, however, is his depiction of the social scientists struggling to be effective witnesses, even as they adhered to the canons of scientific objectivity. He reveals how the strain engendered by the "tension between objectivity and advocacy" stretched, and in some cases warped, the sociologists' definition of objectivity. As Jackson shows, Kenneth Clark, the principal target of latter day critics, worked hard to reconcile his disciplinary ethics and his activism. Jackson understands that critics who focus solely on Clark's controversial "doll tests" neglect the bulk of the sociological evidence produced for Brown. Nevertheless, Jackson is forced to admit that, "Clark's testimony was not precisely what he had found in his examination," and that Clark presented a "rather strained interpretation" (142) of his results. These are pretty damning admissions, since Chief Justice Warren placed Clark's studies at the head of the sociological evidence supporting the Court's opinion. Thus, from the standpoint of what the Court noticed, the most questionable studies—then and now—held primacy of place.

Part IV, entitled "Dissolution," traces the failure of the partnership between sociologists and lawyers. Unfortunately, it also describes what Jackson's attempted rehabilitation of Kenneth Clark does to the book's larger argument. Try as he might, Jackson simply cannot void his introductory confession that "It is impossible to separate out the advocacy from the objectivity in their actions" (12). Surprisingly Jackson, a historian of science, fails to apply Thomas Kuhn's insights about paradigm shifts (Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962]) to his subject. This oversight is especially striking, since Jackson thanks Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, two guiding lights of Critical Legal Studies. Kuhn, Delgado, and Stefancic all, in various ways, remind scholars about the socially constructed nature of all knowledge. "Scientific objectivity" and the "truths" it purports to divine are, like the law (and as Jackson contends), contingent on historical context and consensus. Knowledge is objective if those with power and authority in a given place and time agree it is objective. Jackson's assertion that the social scientists' attempts to be objective therefore made them objective remains unconvincing. That social scientists "had good reasons" (130) to believe and act as they did does not make them objective, nor does it make them right. As Kuhn demonstrated, all scientists believe established theories and methods are correct and objective, often in the face of contradictory evidence, until a paradigm shift supplants their initial ideas. Ultimately, Jackson's book highlights the stress that mounts any time academics try to justify intellectual inquiry by appealing to its utilitarian implications. This work will interest anyone investigating the nexus of science, social policy, and the law in modern America.

Gregory Michael Dorr

University of Alabama

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