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The Role of Law in Managing the Tension between Risk and Innovation: Introduction to the Special Issue on Regulating New and Emerging Technologies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Maria Weimer  and
Luisa Marin
Maria Weimer
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam (UvA)
Luisa Marin
Affiliation:
University of Twente
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Extract

Technological innovations are crucial drivers of economic, social, and environmental progress. While innovations lead the evolution of our societies and permeate all domains of human life, they also pose significant risks both to humans and the environment. Law and regulation are expected to enable innovation, while at the same time protecting society from unintended consequences. However, assessing new technological risks confronts deep uncertainty and limited knowledge. In contrast to simple risks (e.g. car accidents), technological risks (such as risks stemming from new health technologies, nanotechnology, biotechnology, or robotics as discussed in this special issue) cannot be calculated according to traditional technocratic models, namely as a statistically foreseeable function of probability and effects. It is widely recognised that regulating new and emerging technologies is challenging for law due to problems of uncertainty and limited knowledge in the assessment and management of technological risks. To address this challenge it is crucial to study the ways in which law and regulation can successfully respond and adapt to technological progress.

Type
Special Issue on Regulating New and Emerging Technologies
Information
European Journal of Risk Regulation , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , September 2016 , pp. 469 - 474
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016

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References

1 Innovation and progress are mirroring concepts. See Beck, Ulrich, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (SAGE Publications 1992) 200 Google Scholar according to whom progress is an institutionalized ‘extra-parliamentary structure of action for the permanent changing of society’.

2 On technological risks as unintended consequences of late modernity see Beck (n 1).

3 van Asselt, Marjolein BA and Renn, Ortwin, ‘Risk Governance’ (2011) 14 Journal of Risk Research 431 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Sabel, Charles F and Zeitlin, Jonathan, Experimentalist Governance in the European Union: Towards A New Architecture (Reprint, Oxford University Press 2012)Google Scholar; David M Trubek and Louise G Trubek, ‘New Governance and Legal Regulation: Complementarity, Rivalry or Transformation’ [2007] University Wisconsin Law School Legal Studies Research Paper Series <http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=908229> accessed 5 July 2016.

5 Vos, Ellen and Everson, Michelle, Uncertain Risks Regulated (Taylor & Francis 2008)Google Scholar; Maria Weimer, ‘Risk Regulation and Deliberation in EU Administrative Governance—GMO Regulation and Its Reform’ (2015) 21 European Law Journal 622; Maria Lee, ‘Beyond Safety? The Broadening Scope of Risk Regulation’ (2009) 62 Current Legal Problems 242.

6 Asselt and Renn (n 3).

7 Black, Julia and Baldwin, Robert, ‘Really Responsive Risk-Based Regulation’ (2010) 32 Law & Policy 181 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Brownsword, Roger, Regulating Technologies: Legal Futures, Regulatory Frames and Technological Fixes (Hart 2008)Google Scholar; Wiener, Jonathan B, ‘The Regulation of Technology, and the Technology of Regulation’ 26 Cambridge Quaterly of Healthcare Ethics 483 Google Scholar.

9 Jasanoff, Sheila, States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and the Social Order (Routledge 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Weimer, Maria and Ruijter, Anniek de (eds) Regulating Risks in the European Union: The Co-production Between EU Expert and Executive Power (Hart Publishing, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

10 On how regulatory experience with previous ‘new’ technologies shapes the frameworks for the next generation of technologies, see Stokes, Elen and Bowman, Diana, ‘Nanotechnology: Looking Back to the Future of Regulating New Technologies: The Cases of Nanotechnologies and Synthetic Biology’ (2012) 3 European Journal of Risk Regulation 235 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Sabel and Zeitlin (n 4).

12 See Joerges, Christian and Vos, Ellen, EU Committees: Social Regulation, Law and Politics (Hart Pub 1999)Google Scholar; Vos, Ellen, Institutional Frameworks of Community Health and Safety Legislation: Committees, Agencies, and Private Bodies (Hart 1999)Google Scholar.

13 Vos (n 13).

14 Weimer (n 5).

15 European Commission, Communication from the Commission on the Precautionary Principle (EUR-OP 2000). See also Patricia Stapleton in this issue.

16 See Mini-Symposium on the EU GMO Reform in European Journal of Risk Regulation 4/2015 (Vol. 6).

17 See Skogstad, Grace, ‘Contested Accountability Claims and GMO Regulation in the European Union’ (2011) 49 JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 895 Google Scholar.

18 See Aline Reichow in this issue.

19 See Roeland De Bruin in this issue.

20 See Patricia Stapleton in this issue.

21 See ibid.

22 See Aline Reichow in this issue.

23 Ruebig, P., ‘The Changing Face of Risk Governance: Moving from Precaution to Smarter Regulation’ (2012) 3 European Journal of Risk Regulation 145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 See Roeland De Bruin in this issue.

25 Earlier drafts of the articles have been presented and discussed at the panel “Regulatory challenges of new and emerging technologies” of the UCall conference “Law and the Risk Society”, held at Utrecht University on 9-10 April 2015. The panel has been convened jointly by dr. Evisa Kica and dr. Luisa Marin. The Guest Editors wish to thank several colleagues who, in different roles, have contributed to the quality of the articles, by giving comments during the panel session of the UCall conference and by providing comments to earlier versions of the articles: Prof. Diana Bowman, Dr. Roderick van Dam, Dr. Froydis Gillund, Prof. Michiel A. Heldeweg, Dr. Melinda Mueller, Prof. Henry Rothstein, Prof. Elen Stokes, Prof. Ramses A. Wessel (in alphabetical order).

26 For a similar reflection, see also Zagrebelsky, Gustavo, Moscacieca (Laterza, 2015)Google Scholar.