This edited collection explores the disruptive effects of technology on law, in the challenge presented to regulators as they strive to manage the transition from one technological state to another and in the opportunities presented as regulators transition from traditional rule-based legal governance to one that relies on new technologies.
This edited collection explores the disruptive effects of technology on law, in the challenge presented to regulators as they strive to manage the transition from one technological state to another (such as the transition from analogue to digital, or from fossil fuels to green renewables), and in the opportunities (and challenges) presented as regulators transition from traditional rule-based legal governance to governance that relies on new technologies and tools.
It brings together nine papers, eight of which were published in the journal Law, Innovation and Technology (between 2009 and 2022) and the ninth of which was a TELOS conference paper that was given at Kings College London in 2023. These papers are presented in three sets, each set reflecting a particular theme for discussion within the broad field of law, regulation and technology: law in context; law in context becoming law in a technological context; disruptive technologies and their impact on law; the regulatory challenge presented by technological transition; and the challenges and opportunities presented by a transition in the mode of governance, from rules to tools. Followed by short remarks about the articles in each set and concluding reflections about the future direction of inquiry where the mission is to understand law in a technological context.
Timely and forward-looking, this collection makes important inroads into broadening the field of legal study by placing law not simply in context but in, what is now, a technological context.
Introduction to Law in a Technological Context: Disruptions and
Transitions
1. Law, Authority, and Respect: Three Waves of Technological
Disruption
2. Private Law and Technology: Beyond Fighting Fires and Fanning
the Flames
3. Regulating Human Enhancement: Things Can Only Get Better?
4.
New Genetic Tests, New Research Findings: Do Patients and Participants Have a
Right to Knowand Do They Have a Right Not to Know?
5. Friends, Romans, and
Countrymen: Is There a Universal Right to Identity?
6. From Erewhon to Alpha
Go: For the Sake of Human Dignity Should We Destroy the Machines?
7.
Regulating Patient Safety: Is it Time for a Technological Response?
8. In the
Year 2061: From Law to Technological Management
9. Technological Management
and the Rule of Law
Roger Brownsword has been an academic lawyer for more than 50 years, currently having professorial positions at Kings College London, UK, and Bournemouth University, UK. His books (most recently, The Future of Governance: A Radical Introduction to Law) are known throughout the English-speaking world, and he also has publications in Chinese, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese. He was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (20042010) and Chair of UK Biobanks Ethics and Governance Council (20112015); he has served on working parties in the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society; and he has acted as a specialist adviser to parliamentary committees on stems cells, cloning, and hybrid embryos.
