Foresighting Futures: Law, New Technologies, and the Challenges of Regulating for Uncertainty

This paper is concerned with making law more effective in its social operation and in its relationship with dynamic, complex and uncertain science. It explores how we might better regulate by considering the concept and role of 'legal foresighting'. It argues that legal foresighting is eminently justifiable and needs to be expanded, enhanced, and vastly improved. It offers a framework for performing legal foresighting in the face of new and emerging technologies, drawing in particular on the authors' experience in the bioscience and biotechnologies context.