The Time-traveling Lawyer: Using Time Travel Stories and Science Fiction in Legal Education

This is an article about the potential value of time travel and science fiction stories and concepts in legal education. Opportunities to use this imaginative and thought-provoking material in legal education, including doctrinal teaching and skill development, should be embraced and celebrated. Law professors are often seeking new ways to capture the interest and natural curiosity of their students and engage them in an educational experience as memorable as it is meaningful. In this context, “meaningful” is something beyond proficiency or competency in areas necessary to obtain the degree of juris doctorate, or the successful mastery of bar examination material. Time travel and other science fiction works are uniquely suited for use in law school. Science fiction writers explore the nature of law and authority in their work. They pull power, prejudice, and notions of what it means to be human out of the recognizable contexts of history and culture, allowing readers and viewers new ways of challenging underlying assumptions. Law and literature are already wrapped together in the world of ideas and philosophy, and useful approaches to their relationship have been put forth by legal scholars in earlier eras. In an age of interactive artificial intelligence, privatized space exploration, global pandemics, and rapidly evolving threats to both the integrity of public information and the planet's atmosphere, this relationship can be retooled and suited to strengthen legal education in remarkable ways.

This article begins with reflections on the emerging legal market and the challenges facing law graduates as they enter it—challenges driven not only by changing needs and demands of the profession, but a broader, aspirational challenge to establish a relevant and satisfying presence in that world. Following afterward, themes and ideas in science fiction and time travel literature are introduced and observed with a focus on the way law, authority, and social structure are used. The work of select scholars with important ideas in the field of law and literature is explored in the context of bringing these ideas forward. What are the possibilities for using science fiction and time travel literature in legal education and thought? The works of several science fiction writers with law-related themes are explored for their potential value, and as a means of re-imagining the legal landscape. Evolving technologies, especially artificial intelligence, are considered with respect for their great potential. This potential is tempered by caution, as those concerned with social justice, global health issues, climate change, and extremist politics observe the increasing presence of AI in every aspect of life. In conclusion, ideas about how science fiction and time travel literature might be incorporated into the law school curriculum are discussed.

As this decade begins, law graduates are finding an evolving job market. They are looking for more and different ways to use their education. Though drawn to law school for any number of reasons, millennials take it for granted that the traditional competitive model for career paths and the results it produces are self-limiting. They do not want to be boxed in. As Robert N. Saylor and Molly Bishop Shadel note: “They are frightened about graduating with huge loans and no job in hand. But they are also disconcerted and depressed that the world does not invariably reward even the most dedicated.”

Robert N. Saylor & Molly B. Shadel, Tongue-Tied America 137 (2011).

Science fiction can be used to refresh and re-energize the law school experience. The what and the why of curriculum needs shift and change. As they absorb what they are taught, students are also engaged at some level in deciding why it is important. Literature and other popular media can bring dimension to the classroom that is not possible with cases and textbooks alone. An example is climate-change fiction, or “cli-fi”, a term coined by author Dan Bloom.

Dan Bloom, Can “Cli-fi” Help Keep Our Planet Livable? The Medium (July 27, 2015), http://medium.com/@clificentral/can-cli-fi-help-keep-our-planet-livable-8b053bd4aa35.

Can there ever be too many ways to think about law? Professor Milner S. Ball explored the possibilities of new and more humanistic conceptual metaphors for law in his 1985 book, Lying Down Together: Law, Metaphor, and Theology.

Milner S. Ball, Lying Down Together: Law, Metaphor, and Theology (1985).

The idea of traveling backwards in time, or forward at an accelerated pace, landing on fixed or random points, experiencing environment, communication, relationships, and industry in an unfamiliar temporal world, has long fascinated. For law students, provocative questions are raised through these encounters. What better test for principles driving rules and authority? In imaginative contexts, students are free to explore the fragility or flexibility of contemporary concepts of law and justice. What aspects of time travel and science fiction literature might help elucidate practice values? If we ask students to identify and study recognizable assumptions in unrecognizable and almost unfathomable systems, we may equip them to be better problem solvers and better builders of the next legal world—smarter, braver, and more resourceful.

The bond between popular culture and law is a subject of spirited debate and discourse. As virtual realities, a whole menu of universes with new worlds, alien cultures, and undreamed of and liberating technologies, play out across jurisdictions, there are surely ways lawyers can project themselves toward a richer experience as the ones self-chosen to inhabit the legal world of the present.

Science fiction and law share themes and concepts. Sometimes easily recognized and other times obscure, these include power, legitimacy, conformity, isolation, communication, privacy, control, freedom, fear, stability, and self-determination. Psychological themes are also present. These include alienation, aggression, apathy, otherness, love, loyalty, mortality, mercy, empathy, aesthetics, and safety. Professors and other mentors can help define the role of law graduates in the next decades by referencing the broad range of ideas and imaginative thinking of science fiction writers. The language and metaphors of the genre are already in our shared experience and consciousness.

See Peter Stockwell, The Poetics of Science Fiction (2000).

In her January 2020 op ed, The Darkness Where the Future Should Be, New York Times Columnist Michelle Goldberg asked, “What happens to a society that loses its capacity for awe and wonder at things to come?”

Michelle Goldberg, The Darkness Where the Future Should Be, N. Y. Times (Jan. 24, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/opinion/sunday/william-gibson-agency.html)

Law is unique in its relationship to society. In varying degrees, it affects everyone and everything. If we carry Professor Ball's concept of law as a medium forward,

Ball, supra note 13.

To prepare tomorrow's lawyers as if they were time travelers, traditional notions of hindsight, foresight, and insight are helpful but ultimately inadequate. Time loops have replaced the notion that history repeats itself. Knowledge is an accepted source of power, but if knowledge alone does not lead to a successful break from inadequate and self-perpetuating institutions, a search for more radical ideas may yield a better energy field for the profession. Free to mingle ideas from their own experience with those from the assumption-free fiction of time travel, students might explore any number of questions. Will historically mistreated and oppressed people find themselves in a newer and even more sinister model of discrimination? Will our ability to communicate with one another evolve or devolve? Will the power of ideas thrive or diminish? Will the term “compromise” come to mean something different, darker, or aspirational? Will that term fall out of use altogether? Will there be a language of hope? As humans become more reliant on artificial intelligence, how will we define truth?

Science fiction offers students unique ways to consider law and its relevance in different contexts. Law is highly visible in some, and in others, it is hidden or notably absent. Law can be redefined or deconstructed. Students can question its nature. It can be branded, marketed, and reinvented. Its value can be questioned. Its relation to other forces in society can be scrutinized without the limitations of real-time culture. Is law porous enough to contain or absorb empathy? Can we conceive of law without human characteristics? Is law definable without notions of uniformity, conformity, or value judgments? How much of the legal world is defined by propaganda?

The language and ideas of science fiction are present in business, design, and the self-help industry. Notable pioneers in these fields have been influenced by both dystopian and utopian visions of the future. Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Space-X, product architect for Tesla, founder of research companies OpenAI and Neuralink, and co-founder of the company which ultimately became Paypal, is a striking example. Musk is a controversial twenty-first century engineering and technology visionary strongly influenced by science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov.

Matt Weinberger & Avery Hartmans, How billionaire Tesla & SpaceX CEO Elon Musk went from getting bullied as a child to becoming one of the most successful & controversial men in tech, Bus. Insider (Oct. 21, 2021) https://www.businessinsider.com/the-rise-of-elon-musk-2016-7.

In a different vein, Deepak Chopra, popular speaker and author in the areas of personal growth and spiritual awareness, writes about becoming “metahuman”.

Deepak Chopra, Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential (2019).

In films such as The Time Machine,

The Time Machine (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 1960).

There are nods to hard science and technology throughout much time travel literature, and there are also works of complete fantasy. Competing ideas about history are found in science fiction. One is that history as mutable. A second is that history is immutable. The third is a free-standing idea of “alternate history”

Time Travel, Time Travel Site, (n.d.), https://timetravelsite.wordpress.com/time-travel/.

In sci-fi stories and movies, characters sometimes find themselves in time loops, repeating minutes, hours, or days. Examples are popular films such as Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day (Colombia Pictures 1993).

Popular culture has been greatly enlarged with time-travel and science fiction, in all forms of media. Some is pulp quality, and some is masterful. Women and African American writers have belatedly achieved hard-won recognition in these fields. Their presence is extremely important in the genre. Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the first women to receive recognition as a writer of time travel and science fiction, rejected conventional definitions and limitations on concepts of gender, parenting, and family in her work, much of which is set in the fictional Hainish universe.

Ursala K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969).

On the importance of science fiction in the battle against climate change, Diego Arguedo Ortiz writes, “for much of science fiction history white males have dominated the genre—with the figure of the male scientist or the white explorer commonplace—and the voices of women, indigenous groups, and people of color have been marginalized, even if they were also writing and publishing.”

Ortiz, supra note 6.

Octavia Butler's time travel and science fiction stories are provocative and magnificent. Butler won multiple awards for her diverse body of work, which includes a time traveling woman's experience of slavery in Kindred

Octavia E. Butler, Kindred (1979).

In Butler's work, parallels to current events in all spheres of life, especially politics, governmental accountability, and the struggle to achieve racial and gender equality, are striking.

In time travel, as in other types of storytelling, there is drama, tragedy, comedy, suspense, romance, intrigue, and mystery. One peculiar hallmark of time travel is the tension between the world of the time traveler, represented by the experience, reactions, and choices of the traveler, and that of the past or future. Is there an understanding? If so, what is it? Will it change anything in the world of the traveler upon the return journey—if there is one? The traveler, whether detached or engaged, is in a discovery process readers and movie watchers adopt. In many instances, law and its core subjects are involved. In Will There Be Justice? Science Fiction and the Law, lawyer and science fiction author Christopher Brown writes, “Stories of science fictional law breaking have profound potential to highlight the injustices we accept without question in real life—using the speculative prism to show truths about our world that realism cannot.”

Christopher Brown, Will There Be Justice? Science Fiction and the Law, TOR.COM, (June 3, 2020), https://www.tor.com/2019/08/07/will-there-be-justice-science-fiction-and-the-law.

Whether the tension is between present and past, present and future, or present and an alternate history, the traveler learns and reacts to things which can be made to look quite familiar, even if they cannot be known in real time. The ideas that set time travel apart from other literature necessarily flow from these unknowns—the writer's projected vision of order, authority, life, and limitation. There are novel and sometimes futile, sometimes transformative relationships between the travelers and the time-distant environments of the stories.

As a branch of the field of law and literature, law and time travel are a natural pairing. The study of law and literature offers students ways to think about the professional identity of lawyers, values ascribed to law by members of society, the language and communicative properties of law, and its aesthetic properties. The same is true and perhaps amplified in time travel literature.

Ideas about law and literature have evolved over the last century, beginning with questions about whether a relationship exists and, if it does, what value it holds. The nature of the relationship has been discussed and debated with enthusiasm by numerous legal scholars, including Justice Benjamin Cardozo, Richard Posner, James Boyd White, Richard Weisberg, and Robin West.

Professor West has referred to three separate theories of law and literature, or “quite different interdisciplinary projects”, as “the literary, the jurisprudential, and the hermeneutic.” In the first, law as a subject in great works of literature is often insightfully treated. In the second, literature past, present, and future is viewed as having or capable of having the force of law. In the third, literature is viewed as a path to interpretation of legal texts.

Robin West, Literature, Culture, and Law — at Duke University, 1 (Geo. Pub. L., Working Paper No. 1201867).

With time travel literature, as with other genres, arguments can be made for the value of each of these theories. Given the variety of unique topics and perspectives among time travel writers, even within the discrete areas of science fiction and what might be called “dream” fiction, the election of one theory over others might pose unnecessary limitations. The need to use traditional models at all is questionable. However, they serve as a good starting point. It is worthwhile to observe that the relationship has been considered intently and expressed in rich and varied terms.

Justice Cardozo professed the view that the law is literature: “We are wasting our time, so many will inform us, if we bother about form when only substance is important. I suppose this might be true if anyone could tell us where substance ends and form begins.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo, Law and Literature, in Selected Works of Benjamin Nathan Cardozo 339–346 (Margaret E. Hall, ed., 1947).

In time travel literature, issues driving contemporary debate on social policy and legislation are pervasive. Consider the Victorian author, Charles Dickens. Ebenezer Scrooge was not a lawyer, but he was a time traveler. What might Scrooge's transformative experience offer that cannot be found in Dickens's famously cynical look at the law itself, Bleak House?

Charles Dickens, Bleak House (Penguin Books 1971)(1853).

Dickens's story is useful for legal education in other ways. Decades before the significance of early childhood development was fully recognized, he brought the reader along with Scrooge, his time traveler, to confront the painful and life-changing experiences of an emotionally isolated childhood. Unlike characters in conventional fiction, time travelers have the advantage of the moment, experiencing the past without the limitations of memory and the future outside the narrow space of their own imagination or need for wish fulfillment. In practice, lawyers can draw upon these concepts for “a day in the life” videos in personal injury cases or mitigation in capital murder cases.

Bringing ideas about law and literature forward from the very fruitful period of the 1980s, they can breathe new life into law curriculum of the twenty-first century. It is also possible to bypass this question—the precise nature of the relationship between law and literature—and view the intersect of law and the world of science fiction with an appropriately unique vision. Attempts to categorize it may diminish the opportunity to explore its characteristics with abandon. An atmosphere that is both self-aware and selfless surrounds the time traveler in these encounters. Whether the emphasis is on origins, environment, socio-political landscapes, artificial intelligence, or some extraordinary pairing of these, time travel informs the study of law in its own way.

Robin West has noted a more recent focus on law and culture as opposed to law and literature. She says this about the shift: “as our focus in humanistic studies of law shifts—and broadens—from literature to culture, we should be careful not to lose our attentiveness to the critical perspectives contained within imaginative literature and culture both, and no matter how each of those terms are defined”.

West, supra note 48, at 3.

The connections between law, literature and culture are arguably stronger and more complex as daily life activities move from brick and mortar buildings to virtual places. Readers may choose a virtual library, especially in periods of public health crisis. Art, music, literature, and forums for all kinds of communication have migrated increasingly into cyber theatres and galleries. Needs for any type of information or commodity can be gratified almost instantly. At the same time, the personal quality of information and forms of expression have undoubtedly been compromised. The inestimable amount of information crossing before us threatens to diminish the special character of literature, but it also makes it more accessible and more egalitarian.

If we think of ways law embraces the culture and spirit of time travel and science fiction, we naturally tend toward the positive. Positive concepts of transhumanism and the predominance of futurism in fantasy have pushed Orwellian dystopia to one side, although it is still useful to scrutinize that side. Professor Ball's search for conceptual metaphors inspires us to look beyond our world and our time for additional ways of understanding law. Drawing on his chosen metaphor, a medium, we might consider law's preservative properties. Conversely, mediums are reactive. They can stabilize or dissolve substance. They can be restorative, calming, or palliative.

When addressing doctrine, legal systems, judicial philosophy, or experiential law courses and skill development, time travel literature enlarges the discussion. Law figures prominently in science fiction and time travel. Time travelers encounter novel legal systems and thought-provoking dilemmas while recognizing or woefully failing to recognize a familiarity or affinity with things already known. Star Trek's “prime directive”,

Star Trek (NBC television broadcast, Gene Roddenberry prod. 1966–1969).

Other glimpses of law in science fiction are darker. In H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, the “Sayer of the Law” is one of the beast folk chosen by a sadistic doctor to indoctrinate the others with a set of rules that resemble religious law.

H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896).

Throughout the genre, bits and pieces of legal history and almost-recognizable reality are found alongside startling new ideas and sketched-in technologies that transcend reason. Compelling themes in the journals of time travelers are often subjects at the heart of law and social controversy in our time—the relationship between humans and their environment, the tension between development and the destruction of precious resources, reproductive rights, bioethics, concepts of childhood and parenting, religion and spiritualty, art and creativity, greed, prejudice, exploitation, privacy, and the corruption of moral codes by conquest.

Language is also a key part of the relationship of law and literature. This holds true for science fiction, and it is important for students to appreciate law's connection to language. Consciousness of language, along with its power and limitations, are companion subjects to law. These are celebrated in the work of James Boyd White. Professor White recognizes not only a comfortable dependence of law on literature, but a unique relationship between each lawyer and language. In Success for the Lawyer and Writer: Establishing the Right Relationship with His Language, he writes “it is fair to say that as lawyers we are not the products of a mass-production, assembly line education system, identical little lawyers lined up in a row. For some people, law leads to an ever duller and more restrictive life, to drudgery and routine; for others, to a life by comparison free and self-expressive, which seems to yield and form itself to the controlling intelligence or imagination.”

White, supra note 50, at 39.

Science is an obvious element that helps define this genre, although time-travel literature falls into distinct categories. One is heavy with science and technology. Writers in this category are often respected scientists or at least well-educated in science. For example, Arthur C. Clarke

See Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Several well-known time travel stories are of the type outside the science-based category. For example, Dickens's A Christmas Carol,

Dickens, supra note 53.

Most non-science time travel places the protagonist in an earlier era. The meeting of two—the traveler and the earlier environment—is the focus of the work, whether history is altered, or the traveler keeps any memory of the experience. Unlike other science fiction, these journeys and the messages readers discover in them do not depend on novel technologies or artificial intelligence. They provide an immediate perspective on the way laws, societal norms, and prejudices change and adapt along with things like fashion and taste.

Many time travel stories either deal directly with law or land on it indirectly, by focusing on legal issues. Some of these are H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine,

Wells, supra, at note 25.

Time travel writers have the freedom and the challenges that come with addressing familiar issues in novel and unfamiliar contexts and settings. They use unique or ambiguous definitions for things readers recognize as racism, misogyny, slavery, genocide, oppression, ethnocentrism, and jingoism. Their work is rich with irony and suspense, but it moves beyond other forms of fiction with its ability to sidestep versions of reality understood and accomplished by humans thus far. It is not surprising that many writers of time travel and other science fiction were or are also lawyers. Examples are Eleazar Lipsky, Theodore Thomas, David Drake, Laura Montgomery, Charles Harness, and Christopher Brown.

Hank Davis & Christopher Ruocchio, Overruled 3 (Hank Davis & Christopher Ruocchio eds., 2020). This is a collection of science fiction about law and lawyers. Many of the authors are also lawyers.

Time travel and science fiction literature can be used in creative ways to help students develop skill in language, writing, problem solving, and persuasion. It can also be used topically. It is well-suited for courses addressing human rights, mental health law, ethics, legislation, law and technology, artificial intelligence, legal philosophy, and environmental law. What informs our assumptions about the legal world of the future? What role will lawyers play in the future? What will the impact of advancing technologies and artificial intelligence be? How do we envision the legal landscape? Are there enduring practice values in law? If so, what are they, and why are they enduring? Christopher Brown writes, “Science fictional extrapolation is such an ideal laboratory for imagining the policy changes incident to technological disruption that the tools of SF writers are increasingly being used by 21st century legal scholars as they wrestle with issues like what sort of tort liability should apply to autonomous vehicles, what legal rights or responsibilities an AI should have, how law can prevent the proliferation of killer robots (there is even a real-world NGO for that), and who owns the moon—and the minerals it contains.”

Brown, supra note 47.

Unique and favorable characteristics set time travel literature apart from other literature and distinguish it for purposes of enhancing legal education. However, shared characteristics should also be considered. Time travel stories contain elements of myth, poetry, and fantasy. One particularly rich example is Robert Silverberg's Sailing to Byzantium.

Robert Silverberg, Sailing to Byzantium, in The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century 252 (Harry Turtledove & Martin H. Greenberg eds., 2005).

Myth is a relative of time travel literature. The two share elements. In The Clash of the Titans,

The Clash of the Titans (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 1981).

Paradoxically, mythology is told and written, just as time travel is told and written. In each case, a sense of what is beyond the knowns drives the story. Or, viewing time travel as the alter ego to mythology, the reader encounters what can be told but not actually known. Concepts of heroism, courage, loyalty, and the struggle to attain good over evil figure heavily in myth and fantasy. Consider Campbell's work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces,

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces 229–237 (1949).

In trial, jurors search consciously and unconsciously for heroes. They identify heroes and anti-heroes in the courtroom. They respond to perceived acts of courage or heroism, and they respond to perceived acts of cowardice or evil. In opposite ways, these perceptions are strong motivators. Jurors and judges act on needs that appear in many forms in literature—needs for revenge, mercy, restorative justice, and safety. Safety is a powerful theme. It might be viewed as a defense to aggression or violence, or a condition of being protected. It is the absence of harm.

The relationship between truth and safety is explored in many ways in time travel and other science fiction. Assuming that truth is factual and that it is known, it is often critical to survival. Truth and safety can be viewed in different contexts—for example, one is the cliché that knowledge is power, and the more we know, the better we are at finding safety or remaining safe. Conversely, there is the idea that ignorance is bliss, that what we do not know cannot hurt us. Scientists seek truth. The need for objective truth, whether for survival or any number of lesser identified goals, is an underlying assumption of science. Accuracy and precision are highly valued. The need to be sure, with a related emphasis on testing, is a theme of science. Objectivity and the necessary independence to support it are fundamental. In recent years, the extraordinary politicization of science and the sponsorship of “alternative facts”

Marilyn Wedge, The Historical Origins of “Alternative Facts”, Psychol. Today (Sept. 27, 2020), https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/suffer-the-children/201701/the-historical-origin-alternative-facts.

The search for truth figures heavily in science fiction. The consequences of ignoring scientific or historical truth, limiting access to it, or hiding it altogether, are rich subjects for literature. The stories of H.G. Wells

Wells, supra notes 27 & 56.

Another common thread in time travel and law is courage. Courage is a core value of advocacy—particularly the willingness to take on a controversial or unpopular cause or client. Greatness in law might be defined as the skill of persuasion when the outcome is uncertain, or the likelihood of succeeding is almost zero. Persuasive ability is important, and the art of persuasion is of great value. However, it is ultimately courage, which we might define as a willingness to engage in advocacy with an unknown end, that unites law and the best time travel writing. The courage to stand up to authority, especially when it appears to be futile, and the recognition of values as goals in themselves, are strong supporting themes.

As the special subjects of time travel–science, technology, and artificial intelligence—become increasingly significant in daily life, their impact on law will likely be profound. However, a subtler and more elusive concern is their impact on law's themes, especially those that rest on emotional and psychological well-being. Law students navigate through all sorts of subjects with these underlying themes. Whether fully articulated or not, themes of safety, privacy, self-determination, mercy, courage, and hope are present. Sometimes they are open and obvious, and in other cases they are hidden in the details.

Ironically, time travel stories address issues that are newsworthy and controversial in present or real time. Racism, gender identity, sexuality, the displacement of human industry with machines, biological engineering, climate change, and environmental catastrophe are strong themes in time travel stories and movies. One example is the 1973 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin's graceful and matter-of-fact science fiction addresses non-traditional gender roles and sexuality. She was writing at a time when women's issues and sexual identity were just rising in national consciousness.

Le Guin, supra note 39.

Technology and artificial intelligence are essential ingredients for resourceful science fiction writers. These subjects help foster an ideal interdisciplinary effort. In law, the importance of advances in technology and the increasing use of artificial intelligence are unquestionably high. Lawyers are expected to be educated and competent in technology as it relates to both practice and substance. Artificial intelligence has changed the landscape of practice in every area of law, and it will continue to do so as science progresses. Reflecting the significance of these areas, the Science and Technology Section of the American Bar Association

See American Bar Association, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/environment_energy_resources/ (last visited July 9, 2020).

Children of the sixties and seventies onward can close their eyes and recall favorite episodes of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek,

Star Trek, supra note 55.

Evolving technology is central to issues in criminal justice, privacy rights, and first amendment law.

See Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014); Carpenter v. U.S., 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018).

Understandably, cyber security has become a huge industry. Databases can be corrupted or breached. The operational systems of corporations and agencies can be held for ransom. Hackers and their “clients” have become the new international villains. Piracy, now a rare occurrence on the high seas, has become a serious threat in cyberspace. On Pluralsight, readers are advised to prepare for “the fourth industrial revolution” and given a glimpse of the anticipated technologies and skill set necessary for the next decade.

Tech in 2025: 10 Technologies that will Transform the Global Economy, Pluralsight (n.d.), https://learn.pluralsight.com/resource/offers/2019/tech-in-2025.

The broadening field of robotics also has its roots in science fiction. Scientist and author Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics have the sound and feel of something profound—religious commandments, albeit without the forces of love, brotherhood, or sisterhood:

First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm;

Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Isaac Asimov, Runaround, in I Robot (Gnome 1950).

As humans share an increasing percentage of their lives with interactive machines and grow to depend on them for a variety of needs both personal and professional, Asimov's laws will likely evolve into something beyond fantasy. Humans are drawn to cyber intelligence and interactive machines like moths to a lamp. In addition to 2001: A Space Odyssey,

Clarke, supra note 59.

Author Stanislaw Lem created the fictional super-computer, Golem XIV,

Stanislaw Lem, Imaginary Magnitude (Mariner Books 1985) (1973).

In the field of artificial intelligence, algorithms are changing the way problem solving is approached. In some cases, AI algorithms are even changing the problems. Jeremy Barnett, a UK barrister specializing in fraud, insolvency, regulatory law, professional responsibility, environmental law, and climate change, has referred to algorithms as artificial persons. “AI algorithms are different from ordinary software as they adapt, learn, and influence the environment without being explicitly programmed to do so.”

Jeremy Barnett et al, Algorithms and the Law, 52 Computer 32 (2019); See also Jeremy Barnett et al, Algorithms and the law, LegalFutures (Aug. 22, 2017), https://www.legalfutures.co.uk/blog/algorithms-and-the-law.

There are open questions on the role of AI in judicial proceedings, especially in cases where a decision still depends on resolving credibility contests. Fact finders rely on different forms of information to determine truth-telling. Apart from advances in forensic science and technology, it is interesting to contemplate the future power of non-human intelligence in the justice system. In law, as in science fiction, there is a need to understand the value of emotional intelligence. How critical is emotional information in decision making? The relationship between emotional intelligence and fact-finding as well as fact-weighing is something good trial lawyers take for granted. It factors into determinations of credibility and bias, non-economic damages (pain and suffering), retribution, mercy, jury pardons, and other aspects of verdicts. On the extreme side, how would an intelligent machine handle reasonable doubt? Should intelligent machines have any decision-making role in capital murder cases? Looking at it from another angle, how much do we value the uniquely human connections between facts, emotions, and notions of justice?

Natural language processing (NLP) enables humans not only to interact with computers but to partner with them in oddly human ways. Decades after the arrival of Spellcheck,

Brags and Blunders of Lester Donald Earnest, https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/ (last visited Aug. 22, 2020).

Regardless of their level of sophistication, machines are all about data. Data is now obtainable in smaller and smaller increments. Whether collecting it, analyzing it, or using it in decision-making, machines must have data. Humans have inspiration, fear, prejudice, anticipation, vulnerability, ego, wonder, awe, pride, boredom, and faith, secular or spiritual. Despite the need for objectivity and some degree of internal consistency, if we hold the belief that law is about well-being, emotional intelligence is essential in our legal system.

The idea that humans might hi-tech themselves out of existence is a theme with many variations in science fiction. A quirky example of this is Arthur C. Clarke's Time's Arrow.

Arthur C. Clarke, Time's Arrow, in The Best Time Travel of the 20th Century, 43 (Harry Turtledove & Martin H. Greenberg eds., 2005).

Supercomputers are the thing now highest on the wish list for competitive colleges and universities. College administrators, researchers, and those who support their programs will play a pioneering role in exploring the potential of these super machines.

Betsy Foresman, University of Florida builds supercomputer for AI research, education, EDSCOOP (July 22, 2020), https://edscoop.com/university-florida-supercomputer-ai/.

Motivated teaching faculty can pull science fiction and time travel literature into their classrooms in varying degrees, using it anywhere from illustrative purposes only to core topic. Seminars and other classes can be structured in ways to include concepts and ideas from science fiction and time travel. Dedicated courses are also an option. A simple example would be a seminar on law in science fiction. For reasons discussed earlier, societies and cultures in science fiction offer a unique space for students to test their ideas and assumptions about law. Untethered from historical and ideological perspectives bound to attach in our own world, sci-fi places can be explored from a refreshing distance. Who (or what) are the law makers? Who is subject to their authority? What is the source of authority for law-making? Are the objectives driving law-making fully and truthfully articulated? How are laws enforced? Is there a process to test or challenge law? What are the relationships between law-making, law, power, and other aspects of society like social and economic welfare? What is the language of the law, and how is it communicated to those who are its subject?

These relationships can also be explored in the context of race, gender, sexual orientation, spiritual or religious identification, or any factor that defines “other” or “different” in the culture. Students can consider whether a society is essentially static or changing, the pace of change, and the forces behind the change. They can engage in constructive criticism. They might also bring the community into the project, documenting and studying the ways members of diverse age groups, races, genders, and socio-economic groups relate or react to a sci-fi or time-travel story.

Realistic or “hard science” fiction would add an imaginative and useful dimension to courses addressing environmental law and climate change as well as those addressing AI, technology, and space law. Students could use sci-fi stories and movies to illustrate dramatic changes in applied science and technology, particularly those associated with privacy rights, advances in medicine and health care, and climate change. Using the culture or society in an assigned text or movie, students could draft legislation or work in group projects on public policy. Alternatively, they might focus on laws relating to a special topic like infectious disease.

Law students can work individually or collectively to write science fiction or time travel stories with a variety of legal themes. They might focus on concepts of liberty, personal freedoms, and the nature of government. Alternatively, they might focus on natural resources or health care. Much thought should be devoted to the ways that technology and other environmental factors will alter human life as real time moves. For example, projecting the world a century or more beyond ours, students might build a penal code from the ground up. As part of the exercise, they might be limited to a certain number of laws or to a certain word limit in legal definitions. In a different project, they might imagine and populate a world where racial or ethnic differences can only be identified or observed by those who reach a certain age or elder status. In environmental law, they might draft a future global resource code, addressing water, air, agricultural needs, animal welfare, and other aspects of eco preservation.

Students can “travel” to planet earth centuries from now and draft lesson plans for a course on the 21 ^st century American legal system. Conversely, they can travel back in time with the help of old legal codes and take on the task of identifying and rewriting or “repealing” laws that adversely impact groups, explicitly or implicitly, based on gender, race, or religion. As an evidence project, students might be asked to consider how principles of evidence will or should evolve. A model code might be drafted with attention to the impact of AI.

As an advocacy project, students can prepare and present a trial as theoretical AI lawyers. This project would take a great deal of thought and planning, and it would engage students at many levels. Alternatively, students might present the case to an AI jury. They might reimagine and script a trial in a culture with limited language ability. They might present a case to an AI judge. This would be a good project for collaboration with students from other colleges or departments. Civil cases with damages could be used as well as criminal cases. Students might be asked to draft jury instructions for an imagined jury of beings from another world—for example, they might consider jurors in a society with no word for “lie” or “falsehood”. Conversely, students could try cases in past decades, with well-known individuals from history—actors, politicians, writers, scientists, or artists—as clients or jurors. In a different project, students might time-travel to argue a case in front of a jury at a distinct point in history. This might be the height of the Vietnam War, the middle of the flu epidemic, during Reconstruction, in the South of the 1920's, in the depression of the 1930's, or during the Reagan era.

A common task in these varied assignments is to recognize and identify essential values and enduring objectives in law. In unique and unfamiliar temporal and cultural dimensions, students will be encouraged to seek these. Thought-provoking fiction has always had potential for broadening the learning experience in law school. As new forms of communication and life-altering technologies enter and impact our present experience, the work of those who have been out ahead and beyond real time will be a natural draw for students who want to make positive change.

Law students can benefit from considering the issues and concepts that give this literature its unique appeal. As they prepare to practice, students also prepare to give new shape and dimension to the legal market and the provision of legal services. The challenges they will confront as they move along various career paths call for receptive, creative, and resourceful thinking.

What are the differences, beneficial or otherwise, between human and non-human decision-making? How will law and public policy be transformed in a post-human world? With a focus on topics like the economy, health care, national security, and climate change, how would an AI “leader” shape up against a human? What role will AI play in lawmaking? Can we identify practice values that withstand the passage of time? If so, what are they, and why do they endure?

As clinicians and other teaching faculty consider micro-lawyering and the complex array of skills needed to provide effective legal services to individuals, it is important to factor in change. Practice methods change. Issues change. Client expectations change. The speed with which lawyers and judges managed to successfully transition to virtual practice and even virtual court proceedings during the coronavirus pandemic is an encouraging example. Today's students are more likely to succeed if they leave law school with the sophistication to be adaptable, flexible, resourceful, and imaginative. One measure of outcomes in law teaching will be the degree to which the newest generations of lawyers are prepared to meet the unknowns.