01598nam a22001577a 4500999001900000008004100019100004100060245005200101260002900153300003200182520100400214650007901218773002901297942000701326952010701333  c531874d531874251106b           ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d  aTrabsky, Marc Gaylor, Averyl 957708  aForensic radiology and the testimony of shadows  aSocial & Legal Studies    a34(5), Oct, 2025: p.695-713  aThis article examines how radiological images became accepted by courts as visual evidence of death in the 20th century. Initially conceived as a speciality of photography, X-rays confounded courts, eliciting a range of judicial responses, from outright refusal to consider the images as any kind of evidence, to mocking them as cheap parlour tricks for an unwitting public, to recognising them as more reliable than the testimony of the expert witness. The article contends that courts moved towards recognising X-rays as proof of death only by both affirming forensic radiology's promise of ‘mechanical objectivity’ while acknowledging its reliance on the fallibility of ‘human subjectivity’. We suggest that this history has broader implications in socio-legal studies for comprehending how the invention of novel optical techniques continues to problematise legal epistemologies of death in the 21st century.- Reproduced 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09646639241287009
  aDeath, Law, Evidence, Forensics, X-rays, Photography, Epistemology 957709  aSocial & Legal Studies    cAR  00102ddc40709407063aIIPAbIIPAd2025-11-06h34(5), Oct, 2025: p.695-713pAR137512r2025-11-06yAR