An interdisciplinary approach for comparative lawyers: Insights from the fast moving field of Law and Technology

Focused on comparative law and technology, the Article demonstrates the importance of recent advances of comparative law on interdisciplinary research and argues that comparative law becomes essential to broaden this approach, when facing modern techno-scientific issues. Technological convergence has consequences not only for human rights and the way they can be exercised, but also for the fundamental concept of what characterizes a human being. Social perceptions of risks and geopolitical contexts deeply affect the legal approach to uncertainty. Converging technologies thus challenge us to develop a new, wider perspective on the concept of safety. Comparative law research is functional to deal with technological issues characterized by a cross-national and cross border nature. Additionally, it helps to integrate non-legal knowledge into legal culture. It thus becomes an essential pre-condition to answer complex and innovative questions. Even when research questions focus on the sole legal consequences of technology innovation, this cannot be done without a broader vision of the multidisciplinary problem technology offers. In fact, such a problem appears like an elephant: a unique perspective will not faithfully represent the real image. The Article focuses on a case-study: robotics. An emerging techno-scientific arena where neuro-sciences, informatics, and other disciplines, however, will deeply orientate the analysis of all the legal issues.