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Yearly Archives: 2013
What Is Legal Futurism?
Law 2050 is concerned with the future of law, legal practice, and legal education. The study of these three topics is often broadly described as “legal futurism” or “legal futurology.” Although there is a robust discourse today about the future of legal practice and legal education, less attention has been devoted to systematic study of the future of substantive law and legal institutions as a discipline. For example, in 2011, the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law (HiiL) convened dozens of legal experts and experts from other disciplines to consider the evolution of law over the next 20 years. As Hiil’s name suggests, the focus of the proceedings was on the global scale (more on what HiiL produced in later posts). Hiil’s premise was that there was a need for more directed and focused effort in legal futurism. As Hiil explained in its report, Law Scenarios to 2030:
Legal futurists are not widespread among legal scholars and practitioners. compared with the extensive body of literature on the history of law, there is limited scholarly work on its longer-term future. Some scholars do focus on the future of law, but through very particular prisms, such as how technology will change it. Others address the future of only specific legal areas. Sometimes the future of legal traditions is questioned. On the whole, the limited time horizon of lawyers tends toward use of the most recently adopted law or court decision; they then look back and argue whether that particular law or decision will or will not work. Instead of systematically studying the future and future uncertainties, the lawyer’s way of dealing with uncertainties is to act through unadapted and contemporary norms, decisions, and institutions.
Speaking more succinctly, (more…)
How Will Climate Change Change Law? An Exercise in Legal Futurism
A rapidly growing number of legal academics and practitioners around the world are engaging in one of the largest legal futurism exercises ever endeavored–thinking about how the impacts of climate change and human responses to them will change law. Climate change presents a future of continuing changes across a wide spectrum of climate variables, everywhere, over an indefinite time horizon, with some changes producing conditions never before experienced by human civilizations. How fast and in what directions legal change might evolve under this “no-analog” future is difficult to say at this time given the uncertainty surrounding the pace and course of climate change, but many climate change scenarios have in common a number of projected impacts relevant to law. Obvious legal pressure points stemming from such impacts include rising sea levels, which will present questions of property ownership and protection along the coast, and shifting precipitation and snowmelt patterns, which will put further strain on water rights doctrine. Indeed, adaptation to these and other climate change impacts will likely spawn its own set of legal issues, as human migration and vast infusions of new infrastructure could trigger disputes over land use, environmental, and civil rights policies. Suffice it to say that it is difficult to envision a world in which adapting to climate change does not in some significant ways require the attention of legal institutions and adjustments to legislation, regulations, and common law doctrine. (more…)
Introducing Law 2050 – A Forum about the Legal Future
I am pleased to announce the creation of the Law 2050 blog, a forum for envisioning the future of law, legal practice, and legal education. My shorthand term for this endeavor is “legal futurism.” Legal futurism primarily considers questions such as: How will climate change influence property law? How will liability law respond to robotics and human bioengineering? How will energy regulation law need to change to accommodate a renewable energy future? Legal futurism draws from nonlegal disciplines such as scenario planning and change forecasting to focus on the social, economic, technological, and environmental forces of the future that will put pressure on law to change and will open up new legal opportunities. Legal futurism is thus both theoretical (what might law look like in 2050) and practical (how do lawyers participate in that legal future).
Although the focus of Law 2050 is primarily on the future of law and legal systems, it will also cover important events and news regarding the future of legal practice and legal education. The evolution of law influences the evolution of legal practice, and vice versa. And legal education had better keep its eyes on both processes to stay useful and relevant. (more…)
Law 2050 