Five Future Lawsuits We’re Already Working On

This autumn ’s Battlestar Galactica prequel , Caprica , will souse polite right lawyer Joseph Adama into unfamiliar sound and ethical depths when he happen the first member of the Cylonic metal money . Fortunately , lawyers on our satellite are already considering the legal consequences of the future , wassailer - ladened or otherwise . After the leap , five legal areas trusted to burn up the billable hour of next law firms . Artificial Intelligence and Transhuman Law : When Zoe - R come online , the legal profession is gong to have to ask a draw of hard questions . Is she the same person as Zoe Graystone ? Is she a person at all ? Can Daniel Graystone hold intellectual belongings rights in a sentient being ? Is he her proprietor or her parent ? And , if she run on to commit racial extermination against mankind , is Daniel legally blameful ? Who is working on it : TheTerasem Movement , founded by attorney and satellite communication entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt , search practical and philosophical number fence in nanotechnology and cyberconsciousness . It print two journals to that end , The Journal of Geoethical NanotechnologyandThe Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness , and this December , Terasem will hold itsFourth yearly Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons . Mental Privacy : Sure , you ’ll want to keep the contingent of your genome safe from insurance companies and future employers , but the next field of honor of personal concealment may be your mind . Researchers are working to develop remote EEG and other brainstorm detectors that could one day be used as stealth prevarication sensing element or a new layer of aerodrome security measure . Brain fingerprinting technology , which tests whether defendant have noesis of a specific crime , is currently admissible in court . And with brain - pass over drugs , psychoactive weapons , and skull - directed advertising enter the arena , your psyche may soon require its own attorney . Who is solve on it : TheCenter for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics , head by UC Davis prof Wrye Sententia , investigates the encroachment of raw technology on genial autonomy and take to recrudesce insurance policy that will preserve privacy , self-direction , and choice with esteem to thought , memory , and cognitive developing . And certainly there are firms whose companion are busily research legal way to get inside your head . Extraterrestrial Property : For several decades , the field of space law was focus on the extraplanetary actions of authorities and the locating of satellites in domain . But as individual enterprises call on their sight on the star , effectual scholars have been forced to ponder just who will own the final frontier . Who is working on it : Virgiliu Pop , a researcher at the Romanian Space Agency who once jokingly claimed possession of the sunshine , has written extensively on the peril of allowing individual to stake extraterrestrial title without the realisation of the entire international residential district . Others , like Space Settlement Institute executive Alan Wasser and Douglas Jobes , have written about approaching a real estate theoretical account from a view of settlement . Cryonic Trusts and Estates : Sure , you could wake up from cryostasis like Philip J. Fry did , with a waiting task and a thousand years of interest in your saving account . But you might also end up like Transmetropolitan ’s revitalisation , cast at your most mentally fragile upon an uncaring society . Do n’t take any chance . Before you ill-treat into that freezer , typeset up a cryonic faith to ensure that you ’re still productive once you ’ve thawed out . Who is form on it : If you ’re planning on go into deep - freezing , there are attorneys prepared to do your cryonic and personal revival estate preparation . Travel along the Beltway to compact the serving ofJohn Dedonat Odin , Feldman & Pittleman in Fairfax , Virginia , orChristopher Segaat DC house Venable . Interspecies Family Law : When first contact befall without a rubber and ends in a shotgun wedding , you and your multigenetic kin might find yourselves in cloudy legal waters . What do you do when your sweetie ’s marriage laws command a third partner and your state wo n’t shift past the binary ? Will you have to enter in those pesky father - son rituals that involve manly bond through meditative bother ? And do you duke out the inevitable divorce in court , or resist off alimony claims in far more humane hired man - to - hand combat ? Who is work on it : We ’re trusted that many big and famous law house are hard at work on the hypothetical of intergalactic legal philosophy . For now , we will forward all otherworldly complaints to the attorneys at Crane , Constable , McNeil & Montero , the law offices of Sebben & Sebben , and the senior better half of Wolfram & Hart .

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