Social Science, Law and Public Policy

This book provides a grand sweep of the relations among social science, law, and public policy over the past 30 years. The emphasis is on three stages in social science development. They include establishing relationships, optimizing decisions, and multi-criteria decision-making with decision-aiding software. The applications are in law, public policy, and other substantive aspects of social science. The book provides an integration of the behavioralism of the 19 60s, the policy relevance of the 1970s, and the software revolution of the 1980s. For each time period there were important developments in the integration of law, policy and social science. Some of the underlying goals beneath those developments include obtaining knowledge from empirical sources, useful knowledge, causal explanations, improved quality of life, technological innovation, encouragement of socially desired behavior, and still higher goals.