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DissertationDOI

Technical Legality: Law, Technology and Science Fiction

01 Jan 2010-
TL;DR: In this article, the intersections of law and technology, referred to here as technical legality, are explored through taking science fiction seriously, and it is argued that reflection on technical legality reveals the mythic of modernity.
Abstract: This thesis concerns the intersections of law and technology, referred to here as ‘technical legality’. It argues that reflection on technical legality reveals the mythic of modernity. The starting point for the argument is that the orthodox framing of technology by law – the ‘law and technology enterprise’ – does not comprehend its own speculative jurisdiction – that is, it fails to realise its oracle orientation towards imagining the future. In this science fiction as the modern West’s mythform, as the repository for projections of technological futures, is recognised as both the law and technology enterprise’s wellspring and cipher. What is offered in this thesis is a more thorough exploration of technical legality through taking science fiction seriously. This seriousness results in two implications for the understanding of technical legality. The first implication is that the anxieties and fantasies that animate the calling forth of law by technology become clearer. Science fiction operates as a window into the cultural milieu that frames law-making moments. In locating law-making events – specifically the making of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 (Cth) and the Motor Car Act 1909 (Vic) – with the clone ‘canon’ in science fiction (specifically Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)) and H.G. Wells’ scientific romances, what is offered is a much richer understanding of how the cultural framing of technology becomes law than that provided by the ‘pragmatic’ positivism of the law and technology enterprise. The second implication arises from the excess that appears at the margins of the richer analyses. Exploring technical legality through science fiction does not remain within the epistemological frame. Each of the analyses gestures towards something essential about technical legality. The law and technology enterprise is grounded on the modern myth, which is also the myth of modernity – Frankenstein. It tells a story of monstrous technology, vulnerable humanity and saving law. The analyses of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 (Cth) and the Motor Car Act 1909 (Vic) show that this narrative is terrorised, that the saving law turns out to be the monster in disguise; that the law called forth by technology is in itself technological. In extended readings of two critically acclaimed science fictions, Frank Herbert’s Dune cycle (1965–83) and the recent television series Battlestar Galactica (2003–10), the essential commitments of technological law are exposed. Dune as technical legality makes clear that technological law is truly monstrous, for behind its positivism and sovereignty its essence is with the alchemy of death and time. Battlestar Galactica as technical legality reduces further the alchemical properties of technical law. Battlestar Galactica moves the metaphysical highlight to the essence of technology and very nearly ends with Heidegger’s demise of Being in ‘Enframing’: monstrous technology and monstrous law reveal a humanity that cannot be saved. However, at the very moment of this fall, Battlestar Galactica collapses the metaphysical frame, affirming technological Being-in-the-world over empty ordering, life over death. This free responsibility to becoming that emerges from Battlestar Galactica reunites technical legality with the mythic of modernity. The modern denial of myth, which allowed Frankenstein to narrate technical legality, has been challenged. Free responsibility to becoming means a confidence with myths; it clears the way for the telling of new stories about law and technology.
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a judge in some representative American jurisdiction is assumed to accept the main uncontroversial constitutive and regulative rules of the law in his jurisdiction and to follow earlier decisions of their court or higher courts whose rationale, as l
Abstract: 1.. HARD CASES 5. Legal Rights A. Legislation . . . We might therefore do well to consider how a philosophical judge might develop, in appropriate cases, theories of what legislative purpose and legal principles require. We shall find that he would construct these theories in the same manner as a philosophical referee would construct the character of a game. I have invented, for this purpose, a lawyer of superhuman skill, learning, patience and acumen, whom I shall call Hercules. I suppose that Hercules is a judge in some representative American jurisdiction. I assume that he accepts the main uncontroversial constitutive and regulative rules of the law in his jurisdiction. He accepts, that is, that statutes have the general power to create and extinguish legal rights, and that judges have the general duty to follow earlier decisions of their court or higher courts whose rationale, as l

2,050 citations

Journal ArticleDOI

369 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI

5 citations

12 Nov 1957
TL;DR: In this paper, the status of orbiting artificial satellites in relation to air sovereignty of states and international law is discussed, and a discussion of the legal status of such satellites is presented.
Abstract: : This paper discusses the status of orbiting artificial satellites in relation to air sovereignty of states and international law.

5 citations


"Technical Legality: Law, Technology..." refers background in this paper

  • ...…space law scholarship that was commented on by its predominately military critics – that it was a verbose and wordy literature: ‘the pages of law reviews and political journals have been drenched with writings,’ expressed Lieutenant Colonel Hal H. 79 Kislov and Krylov (1959); Zadorozhnyi (1959)....

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  • ...53 Sergei Krylov and G. Zadorozhnyi.79 This linking of space, the rule of international law and peace was challenged by a hawkish minority who saw in the Soviet Union an enemy that was lawless in its actions....

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  • ...Instead, he saw in space technology a highly advantageous field for United States superiority that should be militarised to defeat global communism.81 Ward’s minority perspective also throws into relief a characteristic of first- generation space law scholarship that was commented on by its predominately military critics – that it was a verbose and wordy literature: ‘the pages of law reviews and political journals have been drenched with writings,’ expressed Lieutenant Colonel Hal H. 79 Kislov and Krylov (1959); Zadorozhnyi (1959)....

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Posted Content
Sara K. Stadler1
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a unique perspective on the world of law teaching: Employing a quirky methodology, Professor Stadler predicts which subjects are likely to be most (and least) in demand among faculties looking to hire new professors in future - rating those subjects, like so many stocks, from "strong buy" to "weak buy", and from weak sell to strong sell.
Abstract: This Essay provides readers with a unique perspective on the world of law teaching: Employing a quirky methodology, Professor Stadler predicts which subjects are likely to be most (and least) in demand among faculties looking to hire new professors in future - rating those subjects, like so many stocks, from "strong buy" to "weak buy" to "weak sell" to "strong sell". To generate the data on which her methodology is based, Professor Stadler catalogued, by subject, almost every Article, Book Review, Booknote, Comment, Essay, Note, Recent Case, Recent Publication, and Recent Statute published in the Harvard Law Review between and including the years 1946 and 2003. In the end, she found an interesting (and, she thinks, predictive) relationship between the subjects on which faculty choose to write and the subjects on which students choose to write.

4 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: Based in part on James Willard Hurst's idea that markets create a social aggregate of behavior that shapes law, Friedman made one of the earliest arguments for the use of popular culture in the study of law as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Based in part on James Willard Hurst's idea that markets create a social aggregate of behavior that shapes law, Lawrence M. Friedman made one of the earliest arguments for the use of popular culture in the study of law. This paper considers Friedman's social theory and places it into a broader context of scholarship on the same topic.

4 citations


Additional excerpts

  • ...164 See Carrillo (2007), p 11....

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