Wednesday Calendar
- University of Illinois College of Law: Robin Wilson, Professor of Law at the University of Maryland, “Nanotechnology: The Challenges of Regulating Known Unknowns.”
-
Investment in nanotechnology has accelerated at a dizzying pace, with billions of dollars pouring into its development worldwide. The National Science Foundation now predicts that nanotechnology will have a $1 trillion economic impact by 2015. Nanotechnology involves the manipulation of matter on a molecular and sometimes atomic scale to creates devices and structures with purposely-engineered characteristics. The resulting structures are too small to see with the naked eye and often behave in ways that we would not predict of larger structures. Very little is known, for example, about nanoparticle accumulation in living organisms or the toxicity of nanoparticles, although many have been deployed in the human body. Although largely confined to topical uses at present, nanodevices are poised for much wider healthcare applications. Researchers at Georgia Tech have used zinc oxide nanosprings to detect individual molecules of a protein, like anthrax, while researchers at Harvard have developed nanowire arrays that can detect cancer in blood. Some charge that “[t]he world’s most powerful emerging technology is developing in an almost-total political and regulatory vacuum.” The talk will explore the challenges to regulating nanotechnology. It maps out different policy paths we may take with respect to nanotechnology’s research and development from a minimalist response-“some form of regulatory control will be necessary to assure that nanotechnology is developed safely”-to placing nanotechnology off limits, an approach advocated for in Europe and elsewhere. The talk also explores definitional issues raised by nanotechnology, as well as difficulties with regulating it as a single technology, and asks whether existing federal regulations adequately address the novel properties associated with nanomaterials and products. More broadly, this paper considers how precisely society can regulate a technology that is in its infancy.
Vanderbilt Comparative Corporate Governance Seminar: David Skeel, Pennsylvania Law School, “Corporate Anatomy Lessons”
University of Georgia Law: Alan Watson (UGA), Lord Mansfield: Judicial Integrity or its Lack: Somerset’s Case
NYU Legal History: Alison LaCroix, Golieb Fellow, NYU School of Law, “Drawing the Line: The Pre-Revolutionary Origins of Federal Ideas of Sovereignty.”