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| Article |
| Soft Law: New Tools for Governing Emerging Technologies |
| Gary Marchant and Brad Allenby |
| 73 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 108 (2017) |
| Open Access |
|
Abstract: As governments around the world struggle to govern a multitude of emerging technologies, they often seek to harmonize their regulatory approaches. But there are at least 10 different reasons why nations may seek to harmonize their oversight of a specific technology, and discerning which of these rationales will apply to a specific technology is critical for selecting the optimal harmonization approach. The traditional approach is the negotiation of formal international treaties, but, as exemplified by the challenges of cybersecurity, such treaty-based approaches are too resource-intensive and difficult to be effective for most technologies. Accordingly, a new generation of more informal international governance tools are being explored, often grouped under the term “soft law.†They include private standards, guidelines, codes of conduct, and forums for transnational dialogue. |
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