Issues spawned by the headlong pace of developments in science and technology fill the courts. How should we deal with frozen embryos and leaky implants, dangerous chemicals, DNA fingerprints, and genetically engineered animals? The realm of the law, to which beleaguered people look for answers, is sometimes at a loss—constrained by its own assumptions and practices, Sheila Jasanoff suggests. This book exposes American law’s long-standing involvement in constructing, propagating, and perpetuating a variety of myths about science and technology. Science at the Bar is the first book to examine in detail how two powerful American institutions—both seekers after truth—interact with each other. Looking at cases involving product liability, medical malpractice, toxic torts, genetic engineering, and life and death, Jasanoff argues that the courts do not simply depend on scientific findings for guidance—they actually influence the production of science and technology at many different levels. Research is conducted and interpreted to answer legal questions. Experts are selected to be credible on the witness stand. Products are redesigned to reduce the risk of lawsuits. At the same time the courts emerge here as democratizing agents in disputes over the control and deployment of new technologies, advancing and sustaining a public dialogue about the limits of expertise. Jasanoff shows how positivistic views of science and the law often prevent courts from realizing their full potential as centers for a progressive critique of science and technology. With its lucid analysis of both scientific and legal modes of reasoning, and its recommendations for scholars and policymakers, this book will be an indispensable resource for anyone who hopes to understand the changing configurations of science, technology, and the law in our litigious society.

Investigations into the interplay of biological and legal conceptions of life, from government policies on cloning to DNA profiling by law enforcement. Legal texts have been with us since the dawn of human history. Beginning in 1953, life too became textual. The discovery of the structure of DNA made it possible to represent the basic matter of life with permutations and combinations of four letters of the alphabet, A, T, C, and G. Since then, the biological and legal conceptions of life have been in constant, mutually constitutive interplay—the former focusing on life's definition, the latter on life's entitlements. Reframing Rights argues that this period of transformative change in law and the life sciences should be considered “bioconstitutional.” Reframing Rights explores the evolving relationship of biology, biotechnology, and law through a series of national and cross-national case studies. Sheila Jasanoff maps out the conceptual territory in a substantive editorial introduction, after which the contributors offer “snapshots” of developments at the frontiers of biotechnology and the law. Chapters examine such topics as national cloning and xenotransplant policies; the politics of stem cell research in Britain, Germany, and Italy; DNA profiling and DNA databases in criminal law; clinical trials in India and the United States; the GM crop controversy in Britain; and precautionary policymaking in the European Union. These cases demonstrate changes of constitutional significance in the relations among human bodies, selves, science, and the state.

This book presents innovative insights into the intersections between science, technology, and society, and particularly their regulation by the law. Departing from the idea that law and science have similar methods and objectives, the book deals with problems, and solutions, that source from these interactions: concerns on how to integrate scientific evidence into trials, how to best regulate new technologies, or whether technological innovations could improve democratic legitimacy, create new regulatory tools or even new spaces of regulation, and what is the impact on the society. The edited collection, by building on a functionalist and comparatist approach, offers answers to how to best integrate law, science, and technology in policy-making and reviews the current attempts made at the transnational and international levels. Case studies, ranging from emerging technologies via environmental protection to statistics, are complemented by a solid theoretical framework, all of which seek to provide readers with tools for critical thinking in the reassessment of the relationship among theory, practice, political goals, and international regulation.

"Tomorrow's Lawyers predicts that we are at the beginning of a period of fundamental transformation in law: a time in which we will see greater change than we have seen in the past two centuries. Where the future of the legal service will be a world of internet-based global businesses, online document production, commoditized service, legal process outsourcing, and web based simulation practice. Legal markets will be liberalized, with new jobs for lawyers and new employers too. This book is a definitive guide to this future - for young and aspiring lawyers, and for all who want to modernize our legal and justice systems. It introduces the new legal landscape and offers practical guidance for those who intend to build careers and businesses in law. ... This new edition has been fully updated to include an introduction to online dispute resolution, Susskind's views on the debates surrounding artificial intelligence and its role in the legal world, a new analysis of new jobs available for lawyers, and a retrospective evaluation of The Future of Law, Susskind's prediction published in 1996 about the future of legal services." -- Publisher's website.

This cutting-edge volume offers a theoretical and applied introduction to the emerging legal technology and informatics industry.