Clarendon Law Lectures 2025-26 - Science, Technology, and the Constitution of Modernity
Science and technology have been recognized for more than a century as pervasive forces in modern life, profoundly shaping how we as individuals and societies understand the limits of our capacities and the horizons of what we can become. By contrast, law remains for most people the repository of the shared values and instruments with which we govern our lives. On this widely accepted account, facts and artifacts come first and norms afterwards. Whether formal or informal, law tells us how we should behave only in the light of what science makes known and how technologies enable us to act.