New at CNS-ASU

Technē De Jure

Technological Legislation in a Nanotechnological Age

 
by
 

 Michael Bennett

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Friday, February 3, 2006 - 12:00pm
College of Law, Armstrong Hall

Abstract: The technological and scientific advances germane to modern societies increasingly stress the capacity of legal theory and legal regimes to think through and act upon basic challenges. In an earlier phase of modernity, jurisprudence —in the forms of judicial practices, policy-making legislative processes and theory— was much more effective in shepherding a lay citizenry through varied adaptations to cultural change. In our era, characterized by rampant technocracy, narrow specialization, increasing complexity and diminishing understanding of our own creations, much jurisprudence is effectively captured in the wake of technoscientific change and hindered in attempts to enact and sustain basic social visions and cultural commitments.

In this talk I will briefly outline several theoretical approaches to addressing the challenging questions facing jurisprudence in a modern technological society. I will develop more fully a perspective based on the concept of technological legislation and describe the advantages of this view over its competitors within the context of domestic nanotechnoscience research, development and dissemination.

Co-Sponsored by
the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes
and the ASU College of Law.