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Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute for Science, Law and Technology
Drawing on its distinctive affiliation with the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent is exploring the intersections of law, science and technology in biotechnology, information technology, and the environmental sciences. IIT is the only technological university in the United States with a law school. That gives both Chicago-Kent and other units of IIT a unique capacity to understand the relationships between law and technology.
In association with other units of IIT, Chicago-Kent formed the Institute for Science, Law and Technology. Initially the Institute is concentrating in three main areas: in biotechnology, the legal, ethical, and societal impact of reproductive technologies, cloning and genetic testing; in information technology, the implications of the Internet's indifference to the territorial boundaries that usually define the jurisdictional limits of legal systems; and in environmental protection, the ability of societies ranging from South Chicago to the Amazon Valley to halt threats to the environment through sustainable development and other new concepts. Cutting across all three of these issues are intellectual property, products liability, institutional design, and use of technology in the courtroom.
A university-based program can do two things to meet these challenges: it can develop new intellectual capital -- new ideas within which policy makers and business executives can make choices; it also can educate a new generation of professionals who can work at the intersections -- engineers who are willing to think about legal problems, lawyers who are willing to think about the unique perspective of technology, business managers who can think about both technology and law as well as business strategy. The new Institute aims at doing both of these things -- it will generate intellectual capital, and it will develop a new generation of professionals
The connection between technology and law is not new. Think about how commercial law developed out of revolutions in ship technology in the Mediterranean 3000 years ago. Think about the impact more recently of the telegraph, the railroad, the telephone, the automobile, and television broadcasting. We are not talking about a new phenomenon when we talk about the interrelationship between technology and law; we're simply talking about new technologies and understanding their implications.
As a center for research on the impact of science and technology on the law, and the impact of law on science and technology, the Institute serves as a forum to bring academic and public policy specialists together to develop working papers on related policy issues. As an academic resource, the Institute provides opportunities for students to engage in legal research and participate in the conferences, symposia and working groups on policy issues that it organizes. It serves as a place where specialists from industry and government can collaborate with the academic community to develop new knowledge and new policy options.
The first major strand of the Institute was activated by the Changing Conceptions program on December 5, 1997. The second major strand -- information technology -- will be activated by a major program on "network convergences" planned for May 5, 1998. The Institute intends to launch the environmental science strand with a major program of similar quality in the fall of 1998.
The point is not to do a high visibility public program and then stop. The point is to use the public program as a way of crystallizing the issues which then guide serious research and scholarship that continue over a period of months and years in that subject area. That is exactly how the bio-technology strand is working. Serious work on measuring public reaction to new developments in genetic technology occurred before the Changing Conceptions program in December. A working of major participants from the that program is refining its research agenda, and an announcement of further research is planned for the summer of 1998 as a follow up. Similar things are underway with respect to information technology and environmental science.
Engineering, business and law students have the opportunity to take advantage of IIT's leadership position in the global and technological arenas, not only by taking courses but also working on policy issues, attending seminars and lectures, and participating in workshops and scholarship.