Article
ID: CBB000470997

Borderline Science: Expert Testimony and the Red River Boundary Dispute (2004)

unapi
Expert testimony Science and law Science and government Controversies and disputes Geology Physiography; physical geography 20th century, early United States Texas (U.S.) Oklahoma (U.S.)

The 1918 discovery of oil in the bed of the Red River, which forms the border between Texas and Oklahoma, led to a U.S. Supreme Court case that involved the extensive use of expert witnesses in fields such as geology, geography, and ecology. What began as a dispute between the two states soon became a multisided controversy involving those states, the federal government, Native Americans, and individual placer-mining claimants. After the federal attorneys introduced scientific experts into the dispute, including the plant ecologist Henry Chandler Cowles and the geographer Isaiah Bowman, fresh from negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference, Texas attorneys fielded their own team of opposing experts. Charged with the task of determining the location of the border, defined as the south bank of the river at the time of the 1819 treaty with Spain, the scientific experts presented the court with volumes of evidence and elaborate arguments, much of it contradictory and involving creative interpretations of existing theories. The case exhibited all the now-familiar features of a trial using expert witnesses, for which it represents an early, overlooked, and particularly complex example.

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Authors & Contributors
Delafontaine, Ramses
Pounds, Robert E.
Baker, Andrew C.
Dixon, Kassie M.
Sherow, James E.
McCall, John B.
Journals
Social Studies of Science
Science as Culture
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
Environmental History
Bulletin for the History of Chemistry
Almagest
Publishers
Santa Fe Railway Historical & Modeling Society
Sam Houston State University
W. W. Norton & Co.
University of Oklahoma Press
University of Notre Dame
University of Illinois Press
Concepts
Science and law
Expert testimony
Science and government
Controversies and disputes
Eugenics
Trials (law)
People
Scopes, John Thomas
Stilwell, Arthur Edward
Bryan, William Jennings
Bailey, Edgar Henry Summerfield
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century, late
19th century
21st century
Places
United States
Texas (U.S.)
Oklahoma (U.S.)
Southern states (U.S.)
Ozark Mountains
Arkansas (U.S.)
Institutions
United States. Department of Energy
Superconducting Super Colider
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