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20 Griffith L. Rev. 817 (2011)
The Speculative Jurisdiction: The Science Fictionality of Law and Technology

handle is hein.journals/griffith20 and id is 827 raw text is: THE SPECULATIVE JURISDICTION The Science Fictionality of Law and Technology Kieran Tranter* This article argues that scholarship on law and technology is a thoroughly speculative activity. The textual signifiers of this speculative orientation are the multiple incursions of science fiction that locate and justify lawyers writing about technology. Through a detailed examination of three law and technology literatures - on early space technology, IVF and virtual worlds - it will be shown that science fiction is the storehouse of images and imaginings that substantiate the legal projection of technological futures. When law confronts technology, science fiction is its speculative jurisdiction. The suggestion is that through a more through-going engagement with science fiction as the speculative jurisdiction, law could engage more adequately with the complexities and contingencies of technological change. This article argues that legal writing on technology is science fictional. As such, it is suggested that much more engaging and critical legal scholarship on technology is possible through a taking seriously of its inherent science fictionality. The nexus between legal scholarship on technology and science fiction is in the inherent speculation by lawyers of technological futures that orientate and legitimate the project of law and technology. This argument is presented in three stages. The first considers science fiction as the West's mythform - that it is the dreaming place for the West's technological futures. The second stage examines in detail how science fiction functions as the speculative grounding to legal scholarship on technology. Three literatures on technology are analysed: first-generation space law scholarship (1956-65), IVF and law scholarship (1978-85) and virtual worlds and law (2004-08). In each scholarship, science fiction provides the location for a conception of technological futures that need law. In this, science fiction forms the speculative jurisdiction. The third section of the article reflects on the limited nature of the legal engagement with science fiction. The science fictions that inform the speculative jurisdiction are socially conservative. The technological futures charted by lawyers' writing about technology are visions that invoke anxiety, horror and concern at the loss of the 'natural' from the possibility of technological change. Science fiction as Western mythform is not so limited. This final section draws briefly on Octavia E Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy to form a different speculative jurisdiction from which rather different technological futures can Senior Lecturer, Griffith Law School, Gold Coast and Editor of the Griffith Laiv Review.

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