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Contests, Competitions and Partnerships

Relationships in Transition

2004 - The Environment: Emerging Scientific Knowledge and Managing Legal Risk

Rapid advancements in scientific knowledge are changing the shape of our daily lives. For example, emerging technologies are making it possible to develop new monitoring tools and new instruments for environmental impact assessment. Whether it is the quality of the evidence that a legislature must rely on to make a decision on environmental regulations or the factors affecting a doctor's choice between competing medications, we look to the law to provide stability and protection.

This competition continues the Law Commission of Canada's recent work on law and risk by asking, in the face of new scientific knowledge and technologies, "How should the law manage these uncertainties?" Research may point to ways we can design the law that will anticipate the legal implications of new scientific knowledge or to ways that existing legal frameworks can try to accommodate new technologies.

Author	Executive Summary	Institution
Institute of the Environment - Jamie Benidickson et al.	Practicing Precaution and Adaptive Management: Legal, Institutional and Procedural Dimensions of Scientific Uncertainty	University of Ottawa
David L. VanderZwaag and Jeffrey A. Hutchings	Canada’s Marine Species at Risk: Science and Law at the Helm, but a Sea of Uncertainties	Dalhousie University