Biolegality

This volume showcases emerging interdisciplinary scholarship that captures the complex ways in which biological knowledge is testing the nature and structure of legal personhood. Key questions include: What do the new biosciences do to our social, cultural, and legal conceptions of personhood? How does our legal apparatus incorporate new legitimations from the emerging biosciences into its knowledge system? And what kind of ethical, socio-political, and scientific consequences are attached to the establishment of such new legalities? The book examines these problems by looking at materialities, the posthuman, and the relational in the (un)making of legalities. Themes and topics include postgenomic research, gene editing, neuroscience, epigenetics, precision medicine, regenerative medicine, reproductive technologies, border technologies, and theoretical debates in legal theory on the relationship between persons, property, and rights.

Scientific research on biotechnologies has become the protagonist of discoveries that exert a formidable impact on public opinion. Every day popular opinion is challenged by the media, so that it becomes not only a witness of these developments, but is also, to a certain extent, forced to become a judge of those cases where human and animal genetics have been investigated over the last decades. The man-in-the-street is thus confronted by moral positions ranging from cautious approval, to wait-and-see attitudes, to unconditional condemnation. On the other hand, scientists are involved in the ethical evaluation of the results of their own research. However, the results of scientific pursuits are capable of producing immediate effects on the daily life of every human being. Consequently, alongside the scientists, people feel strongly about their need and their right to contribute to an accurate assessment of the effects of science on society. This is a collection of essays reflecting a considerable range of different cultural experiences and different ethical underpinnings. The main subject is cloning. Cloning is the most accessible and most readily perceived point of convergence from which ethical judgments on the current developments of scientific investigations can be proposed. Cloning is also the 'paradox' on which the confrontation between scientific research and popular imagination is focused.

This book explores the interplay between regulation and emerging technologies in the context of synthetic biology, a developing field that promises great benefits, and has already yielded fuels and medicines made with designer micro-organisms. For all its promise, however, it also poses various risks. Investigating the distinctiveness of synthetic biology and the regulatory issues that arise, Alison McLennan questions whether synthetic biology can be regulated within existing structures or whether new mechanisms are needed.

This edited volume covers new ground by bringing together perspectives from symbolic legislation theory on the one hand, and from biolaw and bioethics on the other hand. Symbolic legislation has a bad name. It usually refers to instances of legislation which are ineffective and that serve other political and social goals than the goals officially stated. Recently, a more positive notion of symbolic legislation has emerged in legislative theory. From this perspective, symbolic legislation is regarded as a positive alternative to the more traditional, top-down legislative approach. The legislature no longer merely issues commands backed up with severe sanctions, as in instrumental legislation. Instead, lawmakers provide open and aspirational norms that are meant to change behavior not by means of threat, but indirectly, through debate and social interaction. Since the 1990s, biomedical developments have revived discussions on symbolic legislation. One of the reasons is that biomedical legislation touches on deep-rooted, symbolic-cultural representations of the biological aspects of human life. Moreover, as it is often impossible to reach consensus on these controversial questions, legislators have sought alternative ways to develop legal frameworks. Consequently, communicative and interactive approaches to legislation are prominent within the governance of medical biotechnology. The symbolic dimensions of biolaw are often overlooked. Yet, it is clear that the symbolic is at the heart of many legal-political debates on bioethical questions. Since the rise of biomedical technologies, human body materials have acquired a scientific, medical and even commercial value. These new approaches, which radically question existing legal symbolizations of the human body, raise the question whether and how the law should continue to reflect symbolic values and meanings. Moreover, how can we decide what these symbolic values are, given the fact that we live in a pluralistic society?

This book introduces “biolaw” as an integrated and distinct field in contemporary legal studies. Corresponding to the legal dimension of bioethics, the term “biolaw” is already in use in academic and research activities to denote legal issues emerging mostly from advanced technological applications. This book is a genuine attempt to rationalize the field of biolaw after almost four decades of continuous production of relevant legislation and judgments worldwide. This experience is a robust basis for defending a) a separate legal object, covering the total of legal norms that govern the management of life as a natural phenomenon in all its possible forms, and b) an “evolutionary” approach that opens the discussion on a future conciliation of legal regulation with the Theory of Evolution on the ground of biolaw.

Biolaw and International Criminal Law: Towards Interdisciplinary Synergies investigates the foundational, conceptual and interdisciplinary aspects of an emerging field: International Criminal Biolaw.

Synthetic biology is becoming one of the most dynamic new fields of biology, with the potential to revolutionize the way we do biotechnology today. By applying the toolbox of engineering disciplines to biology, a whole set of potential applications become possible ranging very widely across scientific and engineering disciplines. Some of the potential benefits of synthetic biology, such as the development of low-cost drugs or the production of chemicals and energy by engineered bacteria are enormous. There are, however, also potential and perceived risks due to deliberate or accidental damage. Also, ethical issues of synthetic biology just start being explored, with hardly any ethicists specifically focusing on the area of synthetic biology. This book will be the first of its kind focusing particularly on the safety, security and ethical concerns and other relevant societal aspects of this new emerging field. The foreseen impact of this book will be to stimulate a debate on these societal issues at an early stage. Past experiences, especially in the field of GM-crops and stem cells, have shown the importance of an early societal debate. The community and informed stakeholders recognize this need, but up to now discussions are fragmentary. This book will be the first comprehensive overview on relevant societal issues of synthetic biology, setting the scene for further important discussions within the scientific community and with civil society.

This book offers an impressive collection of contributions on the epistemology of international biolaw and its applications, both in the legal and ethical fields. Bringing together works by some of the world’s most prominent experts on biolaw and bioethics, it constitutes a paradigmatic text in its field. In addition to exploring various ideologies and philosophies, including European, American and Mediterranean biolaw traditions, it addresses controversial topics straight from today’s headlines, such as genetic editing, the dual-use dilemma, and neurocognitive enhancement. The book encourages readers to think objectively and impartially in order to resolve the ethical and juridical dilemmas that stem from biotechnological empowerment and biomedical techniques. Accordingly, it offers a valuable resource for courses on biolaw, law, bioethics, and biomedical research, as well as courses that discuss law and the biosciences at different professional levels, e.g. in the courts, biomedical industry, pharmacological companies and the public space in general.

This book offers an accurate and updated approach to the main contributions of cosmopolitan biolaw in relation to sustainability, global governance, organizational health care economics and COVID-19. Bringing together different robust and dense biojuridical epistemologies to analyze key bioethical problems as well as the health care, management, economics and sustainability issues of our time, it constitutes a paradigmatic text in its field. In addition to exploring different epistemologies and jurisdictional scopes of biolaw, including the relationships between this new field and the challenges which have arisen in the current globalized and technologized world, the book addresses controversial issues straight from today’s headlines: for example, the basics for health care, finance and organizational economics, global biojuridical principles for governance, globalization, bioscientific empowerment, global and existential risk and sustainability challenges for a post-pandemic world. The book encourages readers to think impartially in order to know and understand the bioethical and biojuridical dilemmas that stem from current economics and sustainability issues. Accordingly, it will be a valuable resource for courses in the fields of biolaw, law, bioethics, global sustainability, organizational health care economics and global governance at different professional levels.