Science, Technology, and Law
Law plays a growing critical role in the regulation of science and technology, including the ethical consequences of scientific research and new technologies. The relatively new field of law, science, and technology seeks to study systematically the diverse ways law interacts with science and technology. Law, science, and technology has been defined as "the discipline that deals with how our legal system can and must adjust to accommodate the problems created by the ever more urgent and ubiquitous impact of technology on society" (Wessel 1989, p. 260), and as seeking "to determine how the various processes of law—primarily judicial and legislative—respond to changes brought about by scientific advances" (Green 1990, p. 375).
Few law schools or legal scholars focused on the intersection of law with science and technology before the later part of the twentieth century. With advances in the computer, the Internet, biotechnology, genomics, telecommunications, and nanotechnology, technology has assumed an ever-increasing role in economic and daily life, and the law has struggled to keep pace. In the words of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, "[s]cientific issues [now] permeate the law" (Breyer 1998, p. 537). This has led to a proliferation in the study of law, science and technology interactions, including academic centers, textbooks (Sutton 2001, Areen et al.
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