Knowledge, Technology and Law

The relationships between knowledge, technologies, and legal processes are central to the constitution of contemporary societies. As such, they have come toprovide the focus for a range of academic projects, across interdisciplinary legal studies and the social sciences. The domains of medical law and ethics, intellectual property law, environmental law and criminal law are just some of those within which the pervasive place and ‘impact’ of technoscience is immediately apparent. At the same time, social scientists investigating the making of technology and expertise - in particular, scholars working within the tradition of science and technology studies - frequently interrogate how regulation and legal processes, and the making of knowledge and technologies, are intermingled in complex ways that come to shape and define each other. This book charts the important interface between studies of law, science and society, as explored from the perspectives of socio-legal studies and the increasingly influential field of science and technology studies. It brings together scholars from both areas to interrogate the joint roles of law and science in the construction and stabilization of socio-technical networks, objects, and standards, as well as their place in the production of contemporary social realities and subjectivities.

Introduction Emilie Cloatre and Martyn Pickersgill, Section 1 Law, Expertise and Public Participation Chapter 1Science, uncertainty and the normative question of epistemic governance Sujatha Raman, Chapter 2 Contingent participation: imaginaries of sustainable technoscientific innovation in the European Union Mark Flear and Thomas Pfister, Chapter 3The voice of silence: UK patients’ silent resistance to the assisted reproduction regulationsIlke Turkmendag, Section 2 Objects and Epistemologies in Criminal Law Chapter 4 Unchaining research: processes of dis/empowerment and the social study of criminal law and investigationBarbara Prainsack, Chapter 5 Making the colposcope "forensic": The medico-legal management of a controversial visualisation device Gethin Rees, Chapter 6 Telling tales: some episodes from the multiple lives of the polygraph machine Andrew Balmer, Section 3 Regulation, Ethics and Values Chapter 7 Through the thicket and across the divide: successfully navigating the regulatory landscape in life sciences research Graeme Laurie and Shawn Harmon, Chapter 8, Misconduct hunting: research integrity via law, science and technology Marie-Andree Jacob, Chapter 9 Financial derivatives and the challenge of performation: where contingency meets contestability Donatella Alessandrini, Section 4 Law, Technoscience and the Stabilization of Knowledge Chapter 10 Epistemic Jurisdictions: Science and Courts in Regulatory (De)centralisation David Winickoff, Chapter 11 Un-knowing exposure: toxic emergency housing, strategic inconclusivity and governance in the US Gulf South Nick Shapiro, Chapter 12 A likely story: HIV and the definition of disability in UK employment equality law, 1996-2005 Emily Grabham, Chapter 13 Paper prototypes Alain Pottage

Emilie Cloatre is a Senior Lecturer at Kent Law School. Martyn Pickersgill is Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Biomedical Ethics at the University of Edinburgh.