J. Benjamin Hurlbut, Sheila Jasanoff, and Krishanu Saha, guest-edited the November 2020 issue of the journal Science, Technology, & Human Values. This collection of essays, “Constitutionalism at the nexus of life and law,” explores how revolutions in notions of biological life are eliciting correspondingly revolutionary imaginations of how life should be governed.
The overarching goal of the collection is to elaborate the concept of “bioconstitutionalism,” which draws attention to especially consequential forms of coproduction at the law-life nexus. It comprises essays by Jasanoff and Ingrid Metzler on IVF embryos in Germany, the USA, and the UK; by Emma Frow on constructing and containing citizens in synthetic biology; by Amy Hinterberger on human-animal chimeras in postgenomic biology; by Hurlbut, Metzler, Luca Marelli and Jasanoff on the comparative politics of genetic self-knowledge; and this introductory essay by the editors.