Expert Knowledge and Ecological Justice: Challenges and Theoretical Perspectives
María Eugenia Marichal, UNL
2025
The incorporation of expert knowledge into the legal sphere poses persistent and complex challenges, particularly when addressing ecological justice. Judges—often laypersons in scientific matters—may struggle to evaluate the validity and reliability of scientific evidence. This tension is closely related to the “demarcation problem”: the difficulty of drawing a clear boundary between scientifically valid and invalid methods. The blurred line between “science” and “non-science” complicates judicial reasoning.
Each legal system presents its own risks and concerns in evaluating scientific evidence. In adversarial systems, litigation dynamics can incentivize the selection of experts who favor a party’s position, thus undermining impartiality. According to Sheila Jasanoff, because expert witnessing is typically remunerated, expertise may be “owned” by partisan actors and could lead to the commodification of the expert. In Roman-Germanic systems, the major problems with scientific evidence stem from the lack of clear and defined standards of proof, as the final decision is often based on the judge’s “mere belief” or “inner conviction”.
Defining and Contextualizing Expertise
Social Studies of Knowledge (SSK) have long examined the concept of expertise, proposing different definitions. Significantly, after World War II, catastrophic events such as Chernobyl led environmental movements and other activists to question the notions of expertise and scientific progress. Communities of users, patients, and local actors began to produce their own knowledge based on a gift economy and challenging the processes of privatization and commodification of knowledge.
Expertise is not purely technical—it is shaped by social and cultural contexts. Research on cultural cognition shows how values, beliefs, and affiliations influence perceptions of risk, evidence, and scientific consensus. This underscores the importance of mediating between scientific language and legal reasoning, particularly in socio-ecological disputes where the stakes are high and the contexts culturally diverse.
Lay and Situated Knowledge in Ecological Justice
Ecological justice broadens the concept of justice beyond human relationships to include nature and all forms of life as rights-holders. This ecocentric perspective views humans as integral parts of interconnected ecosystems, directly challenging anthropocentric legal paradigms. Unlike environmental justice—which focuses on the distribution of environmental harms and benefits among humans—or animal justice, which often centers on sentient beings, ecological justice affirms the intrinsic value of all organisms, sentient and non-sentient alike.
In legal disputes over ecosystem restoration or the recognition of nature’s rights, the evidentiary basis often includes non-hegemonic knowledge, such as that held by Indigenous peoples. These forms of epistemology may rest on worldviews that do not align with the dominant Western scientific paradigm. This divergence raises a critical question: how can courts integrate such perspectives without reducing them to the terms of the dominant framework?
Despite their relevance, legal systems frequently marginalize or subordinate lay and community-based forms of expertise. Yet, in ecological justice cases, local and experiential knowledge is often central to understanding ecosystem dynamics and culturally specific relationships with the land.
This challenge touches upon epistemic justice: the imperative to recognize and value diverse ways of knowing in judicial processes. Failure to do so not only undermines fairness but may also weaken the factual foundation of legal decisions. Integrating lay expertise requires institutional mechanisms capable of translating between knowledge systems while preserving their distinctiveness.
In this regard, anthropological expertise can play a decisive role. However, when conceived in traditional terms, it may also reinforce the subordination of lay expertise by legal mechanisms. The “anthropology on demand” approach proposed by Rita Segato offers a way to reverse traditional hierarchies of knowledge production and align legal processes with plural epistemologies. Rather than viewing communities or individuals as “objects” of observation, it generates knowledge and reflection in direct response to questions posed by the people who would otherwise be the subjects of research. This approach constitutes a form of “interpellated and available” thinking that is constantly questioned and receptive to the needs and inquiries arising from the context. It seeks to address the “gaps” that dismantle the coloniality of power, including gender relations.
Proyecto Revuelta, grassroots secondary education, Santa Fe. Ph. Marina Martinez)
The Crisis of Expertise and the Risk of Denialism
Over recent decades, public trust in expert knowledge has been undermined by what some scholars call a “crisis of expertise” or even the “death of expertise.” This new wave of distrust arose especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Polarization, online misinformation, and anti-intellectualism have fueled skepticism toward scientific authority.
In environmental matters, this distrust is often amplified by the deliberate production of doubt—for example, climate change denialism or “climate obstruction/delay”—where the relativization of scientific authority is strategically exploited to delay or block regulation.
For ecological justice, this presents a twofold challenge: recognizing the legitimacy of epistemic diversity while safeguarding against the instrumentalization of pluralism for disinformation.
From a theoretical perspective, integrating expert knowledge into ecological justice requires a fundamental rethinking of legal epistemology. It calls into question the assumption that valid evidence must conform exclusively to modern scientific standards, instead promoting a pluralistic approach that embraces multiple epistemic traditions.
However, pluralism must be approached with caution. Legal systems need clear criteria to navigate conflicts between competing knowledge claims, especially when they rest on divergent ontological and normative foundations.
Ultimately, ecological justice is not only a normative framework for recognizing the rights of nature but also an epistemic project. It aims to democratize the production, validation, and application of knowledge in legal decision-making, thereby contributing to a more inclusive and resilient model of justice for both human and non-human worlds.
Apolo, Biotechnology Laboratory, Santa Fe. Ph. Natalia Cobos)
Further readings and resources:
Collins, H., & Evans, R. (2008). Rethinking Expertise. University of Chicago Press.
Jasanoff, S. (1997). Science at the Bar: Law, Science, and Technology in America. Harvard University Press.
Lafuente, A., & Alonso, A. (2011). Ciencia expandida, naturaleza común y saber profano. Universidad Nacional de Quilmes.
Montalván Zambrano, D. J. (2020). Justicia ecológica. EUNOMÍA. Revista en Cultura de la Legalidad, 18, 179-198. https://doi.org/10.20318/eunomia.2020.5272
Moreno Olmeda, T. (s. f.). Negacionismo (del cambio climático). En Glosario Speak4Nature: Interdisciplinary Approaches on Ecological Justice. https://www.speak4nature.eu
Segato, R. L. (2013). La crítica de la colonialidad en ocho ensayos y una antropología por demanda (1a). Prometeo Libros.
Vázquez, C. (2015). De la prueba científica a la prueba pericial. Marcial Pons, Ediciones Jurídicas y Sociales.
