The Nanotechnology Challenge
Creating Legal Institutions for Uncertain Risks

Offers views on how new legal institutions should be formed to address the uncertain risks of nanotechnology.

David A. Dana (Edited by)

9780521767385, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 November 2011

438 pages, 13 b/w illus.
23.3 x 15.8 x 2.7 cm, 0.71 kg

Nanotechnology is the wave of the future, and has already been incorporated into everything from toothpaste to socks to military equipment. The safety of nanotechnology for human health and the environment is a great unknown, however, and no legal system in the world has yet devised a way to reasonably address the uncertain risks of nanotechnology. To do so will require creating new legal institutions. This volume of essays by leading law scholars and social and physical scientists offers a range of views as to how such institutions should be formed. It is essential reading for anyone who may wonder how we can continue to innovate technologically in a way that both delivers the benefits and sustains human health and the environment.

Part I. Introduction: 1. The nanotechnology challenge David A. Dana
2. The five myths about nanotechnology in the current public policy debate: a science and engineering perspective Kimberly Gray
Part II. Public Perceptions of Nanotechnology Risks: 3. Public regulation and the regulation of emerging technologies - the role of private politics Daniel Diermeier
4. How scientific evidence links attitudes to behaviors James N. Druckman and Toby Bolsen
Part III. Meeting the Nanotechnology Challenge by Creating New Legal Institutions: 5. Toward risk-based, adaptive regulatory definitions David A. Dana
6. The missing market instrument: environmental assurance bonds and nanotechnology regulation Douglas A. Kysar
7. Conditional liability relief as an incentive for precautionary study David A. Dana
8. Transnational new governance and the international coordination of nanotechnology oversight Gary E. Marchant, Kenneth W. Abbott, Douglas J. Sylvester and Lyn M. Gulley
9. Labeling the little things Jonathan H. Adler
10. Public nuisance: a potential common law response to nanotechnology's uncertain harms Albert C. Lin
11. Enlarging the regulation of shrinking cosmetics and sunscreens Robin Fretwell Wilson
12. Accelerating regulatory review John O. McGinnis
13. Ethical issues in nanotechnology: persons and polity Laurie Zoloth
Part IV. Where We Are Now - The Current Institutions for Nanotechnology Regulation: 14. An overview of the law of nanotechnology Fern O'Brian
15. Regulatory responses to nanotechnology uncertainties Read D. Porter, Linda Breggin, Robert Falkner, John Pendergrass and Nico Jaspers.

Subject Areas: Medical & healthcare law [LNTM], Law [L]