Biological science increasingly challenges established legal rules and doctrines, even those fundamental to traditional conceptions of the American legal system. Genetics overturns criminal convictions, while simultaneously changing the balance of privacy rights.
Neuroscience changes our understanding of culpability, responsibility, capability, and gender. Evolutionary biology sparks controversy with respect to school curricula and the First Amendment. Traditional legal conceptions of race and ethnicity used in the approval of therapeutic drugs are confronted by scientific evidence suggesting that alternative legal models of drug approval would better serve the goal of equality of access to effective medicines. Ecology points out tensions between our current emphasis on private property rights over governmental regulation in areas such as endangered species and climate change. This panel explores how advances in biological science are transforming the law across a broad variety of dimensions, and critically considers the broader implications of this transformation.