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Law, Science, and Innovation: Introduction to the Symposium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

John A. Robertson
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Introduction
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Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , Summer 2010 , pp. 175 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2010

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References

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Law is part of a society's innovation policy – the complex of education, business incentives, legal, subsidy and other factors that help produce new ideas and guide them to become products and services.Google Scholar
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Society is the ultimate authority, even if in the end it delegates wide discretion to scientists to control most scientific matters. The same is true of medicine. How it is practiced is ultimately up to society. See Gonzalez v. Carhart, 127 S.Ct. 1610 (2007).Google Scholar
Wulf, William, past president of the National Academy of Engineering, has discussed these issues in terms of the “ecology of innovation.” That term includes “interrelated institutions, laws, regulations, and policies providing an innovation infrastructure that entails education, research, tax policy, and intellectual property protection, among others.” He argues that laws made for a different era need to be revised to fit a rapidly changing world to keep that ecology vibrant, citing the patent system, antitrust law, copyright, the drug approval process, and manufacturing systems. Wulf, W. A., Editorial, “Changes in Innovation Ecology,” Science 316, no. 5829 (2007): 1253. See also Farrell, D. and Kalil, T., “United States: A Strategy for Innovation,” Issues in Science and Technology XXVI, no. 3 (2010): 41–50; Chuan Poh, L., “Singapore: Betting on Biomedical Sciences,” Issues in Science and Technology XXVI, no. 3 (2010): 69–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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