ABSTRACT
In order to study the reception of dueling knowledge claims, this chapter draws from a literature called the sociology of scientific knowledge, or simply science studies, as this literature has developed techniques for studying the production and accreditation of knowledge. In adapting the methods of science studies to the study of constitutional law, author shows how people might study the social and institutional settings in which knowledge claims in the legal academy meet and compete for credibility. The following two applications apply the methods of frame analysis and science studies, if only in skeletal fashion. The legal academy is at the center of the first application, whereas the Supreme Court is more visible in the second application. The assertion that the Civil Rights Cases has been misread can be supported using the Cambridge School methods of Pocock and Skinner, though it is impossible here to summarize the intricacies of that analysis.
