The Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal is pleased to announce the lineup for its upcoming special issue on scientific expertise and democratic decision-making. The KIEJ has long featured “special issues” as part of its quarterly publication schedule: topical collections of essays, often collected in collaboration with special guest editors. (Head to the KIEJ website for a complete listing of past special issue topics.)

This year’s special issue, edited and introduced by KIEJ co-Editor-in-Chief Rebecca Kukla together with guest editors Justin Weinberg and Kevin Elliot, drew a record number of submissions from scholars across the discipline, including many whose primary area of research is not biomedical ethics. The issue will feature pieces that range from a general analysis of the in-principle compatibility of scientific expertise and democracy to much more concrete studies of the intersection between scientific practices and democratic values in areas such as weight-of-evidence analysis, climate science, and studies of locally undesirable land uses (LULUs).

The articles are as follows:

• Justin Weinberg and Kevin C. Elliott — “Science, Expertise, and Democracy”
• Henry S. Richardson — “Relying on Experts as We Reason Together”
• Eric Winsberg — “Values and Uncertainties in the Predictions of Global Climate Models”
• Heather Douglas — “Weighing Complex Evidence in a Democratic Society”
• Daniel Steel and Kyle Whyte — “Environmental Justice, Values, and Scientific Expertise”
• Brent Ranalli — “Climate Science, Character, and the “Hard-Won” Consensus”

The Journal is proud to continue to press the frontiers of interdisciplinarity in bioethics, including philosophers of science, public health researchers, political scholars, and environmental scientists in important conversations about our collective future.