Essential reading for anyone working at the intersection of law, science, technology, and culture. The chapters are uniformly probing and, thanks to the inspiration and care of the volume's editor, share an uncommon level of thematic consistency. Most important, the framework of bioconstitutionalism represents genuine intellectual progress. At a time when our legal, social, and even natural categories appear most brittle, Reframing Rights brims over with insight and guidance.
Douglas A. Kysar, Joseph M. Field '55 Professor of Law, Yale Law School, and author of Regulating from Nowhere
Reframing Rights offers an original, empirically grounded overview of the many facets of the co-production of new biomedical entities, legal norms, and regulations. Each chapter provides a detailed case study of individual aspects of these processes, and Jasanoff's final essay brilliantly shows how they jointly contribute to the bioconstitutionalist research program. The book will likely become the standard reference for discussions of bioconstitutionalism; not simply a buzzword, this notion entails a methodology of its own and provides a detailed yet flexible analytical frame for empirical, comparative research.
Alberto Cambrosio, Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University
Modern biological innovations like embryonic stem cell research were not even imaginable when the political and legal structures of our societies were designed, and these biological innovations interact uneasily with these existing structures. In fact, biology is itself leading to a change in definitions of what it means to be human. In this important new work, Sheila Jasanoff edits a fascinating collection of studies of 'bioconstitutionalism' that empirically examine instances of this unease. All scholars interested in the impact of biological innovation on society should read this book.
John H. Evans, Professor of Sociology, University of California, San Diego
Focusing on a variety of genomic-related subjects—including stem cells, clones, bioethics, forensic DNA databases, and race, among others—Reframing Rights improves the reader's understanding of the evolving tensions between life and law in both a domestic and international context.
Michael Yudell, Associate Professor, Drexel University School of Public Health and coauthor of Welcome to the Genome
