Law plays a growing critical role in the regulation of science and technology, including the ethical consequences of scientific research and new technologies. The relatively new field of law, science, and technology seeks to study systematically the diverse ways law interacts with science and technology. Law, science, and technology has been defined as "the discipline that deals with how our legal system can and must adjust to accommodate the problems created by the ever more urgent and ubiquitous impact of technology on society" (Wessel 1989, p. 260), and as seeking "to determine how the various processes of law—primarily judicial and legislative—respond to changes brought about by scientific advances" (Green 1990, p. 375).

Few law schools or legal scholars focused on the intersection of law with science and technology before the later part of the twentieth century. With advances in the computer, the Internet, biotechnology...