Handbook of Workplace Assessment: Evidence-Based Practices for Selecting and Developing Organizational Talent

Chapter 20. THE LEGAL ENVIRONMENT FOR ASSESSMENT

R. Lawrence Ashe Jr., Kathleen K. Lundquist

Almost thirty years ago, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals commented on the intersection of law and science at the heart of employment testing:

The study of employment testing, although it has necessarily been adopted by the law as a result of Title VII and related statutes, is not primarily a legal subject. It is part of the general field of educational and industrial psychology, and possesses its own methodology, its own body of research, its own experts, and its own terminology. The translation of a technical study such as this into a set of legal principles requires a clear awareness of the limits of both testing and law. It would be entirely inappropriate ...