Law and the Human

什么是人类？是什么造就了人类的生活？在21世纪，潜在的答案来自科学、社会科学、哲学或宗教的无数领域——尤其是在最近生物医学、神经科学和人工智能取得巨大进展之后。然而，在历史的绝大部分时间里，法律和法律思想是西方文化中人类定义的核心。从罗马法对“人”的定义到1948年的《世界人权宣言》，法律至少以三种方式提供了不断变化但可靠的人的定义：通过规则的规范性内容，通过政治共同体、主体和政府的法律概念，以及通过定义追求正义的具体解释方法。今天，这三者都已经脱离了对人类生活的普遍理解。然而，法律仍然是塑造人类制度的重要实际力量。从社会正义到社会网络，从生殖医学到技术再生产时代的道德权利，法律本质上无法避免在法律语言、程序、方法、法规和判决中追踪人类的轮廓。当我们站在新技术和潜在的“后人类”时代的风口浪尖上时，当代法律领域出现了什么样的人类形象？考虑到科学、社会科学和技术的发展对法律的不断挑战，今天的法律如何以新的方式思考人类？这个问题的探索相对较少。近年来的理论研究聚焦于“后人类”，法学研究也开始强调法律的物质性代理。相反，这个网络提出的问题是，法律对人类的概念是如何受到技术、气候以及全球经济和政治生活新秩序的广泛变化的影响的。同样，这个网络通过考虑新的实践和思维方式给法律人带来的上述压力，补充了主导法律领域注意力的道德和法律哲学。网络将法理学思想带入技术和物质的转向，同时将其对人的关注作为一个核心重要问题。除了通过学术成果、项目网站、行业演示和大学课程进行传播外，该网络还将以合作研讨会、大型会议和公众参与活动为特色，促进关于法律如何看待当今人类的广泛和持续的交流。它将提出关于人类生活本质的新思想，并通过将跨学科法律研究和边缘学科的学者与行业从业者、文化产业和政策制定者联合起来，使这一领域的研究进一步深入。更广泛的公众知名度和网络活动的影响也将是一个中心考虑因素。公众对网络的了解将通过网站、社交媒体和调查员在印刷媒体上的亮相来增强，以及在泰特现代美术馆举办的一场由艺术从业者参加的关于“人类形象”的研讨会。通过向选定的各党派议会团体和非政府组织进行介绍，将促进与实践领域，特别是立法和政策制定领域的直接接触。此外，咨询小组会议和网络活动将探讨如何在研究人员、法律专业人员、立法者和更广泛的公众之间引发新的对话，以寻求新的合作模式和潜在的未来研究。这样，人权事务委员会为这一网络提供的资金将支持一个较大项目的初始阶段，该项目有很大可能进一步获得资金。

What is a human? What makes human life what it is? In the 21st Century, potential answers come from innumerable fields of science, social science, philosophy or religion-above all after recent dramatic advances in biomedicine, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Yet for the vast majority of history, law and legal thought were central to the definition of the human in Western cultures. From Roman Law's definition of the 'person' through to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, law has offered shifting but reliable definitions of the human, in at least three ways: through the normative content of rules, through the juridical conception of political community, subject and government, and through specific interpretative methods that defined the pursuit of justice. Today, all three have been decentred from popular understandings of human life. Yet law remains an important practical force shaping the human institution. From social justice to social networks, from reproductive medicine to moral rights in the age of technical reproduction, by its nature law cannot avoid tracing a human outline in legal language, processes, methodologies, regulations and judgments. As we stand on the cusp of a new technological and potentially "post-human" age, what image of the human emerges from the contemporary legal field? Given the successive challenges to law from (r)evolutions in science, social science and technology, how does law today think the human in new ways?This question remains relatively under-explored. Recent theoretical scholarship has focused on the "post-human", with legal scholarship also beginning to emphasize the agency of law's materiality. This network asks, instead, how law's notion of the human is impacted by widespread changes in technology, climate, and new orders of global economic and political life. Equally, this network supplements moral and juridical philosophies of the human that have dominated the attention of the legal field, by considering the above pressures placed on law's human by new practices and ways of thinking. The network brings jurisprudential thought into the technological and material turn, whilst retaining its focus on the human as a centrally important question.Featuring a collaborative workshop, a major conference and a public engagement event, in addition to dissemination via academic outputs, a project website, a presentation to industry, and a university curriculum, this network will facilitate a broad and sustained exchange about how law thinks the human today. It will foreground new ideas about the nature of human life, and enable further, deeper research in this area by uniting academics in interdisciplinary legal studies and bordering disciplines with industry practitioners, cultural industries, and policy developers.The broader public visibility and implications of the network's activity will also be a central consideration. Public knowledge about the network will be augmented by a website, social media, and print media appearances by the Investigators, as well as a symposium at Tate Modern on "the image of the human" that will incorporate arts practitioners. Direct engagement with the field of practice, particularly law-making and policy development, will be catalysed by a presentation to select All-Party Parliamentary Groups and NGOs. In addition, Advisory Group meetings and network events will explore ways of sparking new dialogues amongst researchers, legal professionals, legislators, and wider publics, to seek new modes of collaboration and potential future research. In this way, AHRC funding for this network will support the initial phase of a larger project with significant potential for further funding possibilities.