Celebrating 50 Years of the ABA Science & Technology Law Section

[r]apid changes in science and technology affect people’s rights and obligations and require legal accommodation. Lawyers are becoming increasingly aware that science and technology have an impact on the law and its practice. There is a need for further recognition by the organized bar both of the potentials and the limitations of science and technology. There is a further need for coordination of lawyer’ efforts to understand and to utilize science and technology.

The Standing Committee noted its own beginning in 1968 as the result of the merger of the Special Committee on Electronic Data Retrieval with the Special Committee on Communications Law. Comprising a growing membership and four Advisory Committees, the Standing Committee concentrated its efforts in the information sciences, writing papers and providing programs for many sections and committees of the ABA. The Standing Committee also published the quarterly journal Jurimetrics, a publication begun in the late 1950s by the Committee’s predecessors and boasting in 1974 over 600 subscribers.

The new ABA Section of Science and Technology succeeded the Standing Committee on Law and Technology in 1974. During its inaugural year, the Section of Science and Technology established the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists (NCLS) as a joint standing committee with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

I sit as the 51st chair of the SciTech Section. In looking back on the history of SciTech, it is not lost on me how prescient and incredibly relevant the 1974 prefatory comments of the Standing Committee’s Statement of Need are for the legal profession today. The proliferation of science and technology and the increasing presence of their effects on law and the practice require lawyers to lead proactively, with an expansive and interdisciplinary approach.

Consonant is SciTech’s mission “to provide leadership on emerging issues at the intersection of law, science, and technology; to promote sound policy and public understanding on such issues; and to enhance the professional development of its members.” SciTech carries out this mission through its substantive committees housed within the Interdisciplinary, Life Sciences, and Privacy, Security, and Emerging Technology divisions. The members of these committees are lawyers, judges, scientists, technologists, academics, and law students—members whose diversity of backgrounds and expertise uniquely position the committees to serve as SciTech’s vanguards to the profession on topics including artificial Intelligence, quantum computing, cybersecurity, biomedical advances, climate change, and space law. SciTech’s vanguards collaborate both within and beyond the ABA, contributing research, providing practical insights, and leading discussions on ethics, policy, and regulations to the growing audience of legal, scientific, and business communities.