In 1918, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote "The life of the law is not logic, it is experience" and in 1921, “a page of history is worth a volume of logic.”
For centuries, jurists have decided cases based on the human experience of behavior among individuals, families, firms, associations, and nations. Those actors are influenced by multiple, often conflicting environmental and social factors of great complexity. Drawing from this history, jurists weigh opinions and arguments of the likely effect of their decisions on the social network. Advocates present them with the best input of physicians, sociologists, economists and other scientists as well as the teachings of historical experience.
Until recently, there were few scientific structures for explaining why complex social networks behaved as they did during times of ambiguity and change. Without understanding why the history is as it is, how do jurists decide how to shape the future? How will the economy be affected by the recognition of new torts? What will happen if we prohibit or encourage certain forms of business contracts or combinations? What will be the global effects of forcible regime change in a complex, multi-ethnic nation that bristles with weapons? Jurists, lawmakers and executives at all levels consider the input of what science has to offer, then make their best judgment on what to do. Often, the judgment results in unintended consequences, some good and some bad.
The new science of networks now brings together the results of quantitative research into systems as diverse as subatomic particles, neural nets, ecologic food webs, electrical grids and business organizations. Research has documented fundamental similarities in how each of these very different complexities behave, especially in times of crisis and rapid change. These universalities among systems provide us with a way to transpose the learning in one field of science to another, to apply the history and experience they offer to the social science of jurisprudence.
As articulated by an expanding universe of many scholars as diverse as the physicist Barabasi, and the sociologist Watts, this new science brings us to the threshold of a dramatically expanded perspective on the issues of jurisprudence. Exploring that science and its meaning for jurisprudence is a basic goal of this journal.
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