Department of History - Carnegie Mellon University

Faculty

Jay Aronson

Rank: Assistant Professor
Ph.D.: University of Minnesota, 2003
Department Member Since: 2004

Jay Aronson’s research and teaching focus on the interactions of science, technology, law, and human rights in criminal justice and post-conflict resolution contexts. His first book, entitled Genetic Witness: Science, Law, and Controversy in the Making of DNA Profiling (Rutgers University Press, 2007), examines the development of forensic DNA analysis in the American legal system. He is also completing a series of articles that investigates the impact of recent scientific advances on notions of culpability, finality, and justice in criminal jurisprudence.

His current research project, which is partially funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, analyzes the increasing importance of science and technology (especially statistics and DNA profiling) in human rights investigations world-wide. He has already conducted research for this project in South Africa, and plans to make several visits to the former Yugoslavia over the next few years.

Dr. Aronson's other academic interests include: the role of democratic deliberation in science policy decision-making; the place of science and technology in economic and social development; and concepts of private and public property in the life sciences and biotechnology.

Dr. Aronson completed his Ph.D. in History of Science and Technology at University of Minnesota in 2003, and received his B.S. in Biology from the University of Michigan in 1995. He was both a Pre-Doctoral (2001-2003) and Post-Doctoral Fellow (2003-2004) in the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Publications

Books

Genetic Witness: Science, Law, and Controversy in the Making of DNA Profiling (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007)

Articles

(with Simon Cole) “Science and the Death Penalty: DNA, Innocence, and the Debate over Capital Punishment in the United States,” accepted for publication in Law and Social Inquiry, October 2008.

“Creating the Network and the Actors: The FBI’s Role in the Standardization of Forensic DNA Profiling,” Biosocieties, 2008, 3(2): 195-215.

“Brain Imaging, Culpability, and the Juvenile Death Penalty,” Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2007, 13(2): 115-142.

“The ‘Starch Wars’ and the Early History of DNA Profiling,” Forensic Science Review, 2006, 18(1): 59-72.

“DNA fingerprinting on trial: the dramatic early history of a new forensic technique,” Endeavour, 2005, 29(3): 126-131.

Review of Philip Kitcher, Science, Truth, and Democracy and Daniel Kleinman (ed.), Science, Technology, and Democracy, in Science, Technology and Human Values, 2003, 28(1): 162-168.

“Molecules and Monkeys: George Gaylord Simpson and the Challenge of Molecular Evolution,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2002, 24: 441-465.

Book Chapters

Simon Cole and Jay Aronson, “Blinded by Science on the Road to Abolition,” in Austin Sarat and Charles Ogletree, On the Road to Abolition (NYU Press, in press).