Afterword

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Publication year: 2017
• Citation: Vol. 4 No. 2

Afterword

Nicholas Torres

Forrest Lind III

AFTERWORD

Nicholas Torres^*Forrest Lind III^**

This year, Emory University School of Law celebrates its Centennial Year. As Emory Law celebrates a century of advancing the rule of law it also celebrates one hundred years of advancing society. Indeed, the two primary engines of societal progress are the laws that protect humanity and the innovations that enhance it as a whole. Yet, innovation and law are often at odds due to the nature of these concepts. Innovations create changes and the law must react to those changes. If technology is truly advancing it often pushes boundaries and quickly out paces the legislative process. Even when current laws are stretched by liberal interpretation, technology can still escape their scope. For the past century, the answer to this problem has been to empower agencies to regulate industries in the hopes that the agencies may move faster than a legislative body. However, as the speed with which the digital age blesses society with new innovations increases at an ever faster rate, agencies have reacted with power grabs for jurisdiction and a flurry of redundant regulatory schemes. Thus, as technology continues to advance, the United States' regulatory administrative state has become an increasingly restrictive bottleneck for innovation. In recognition of the constrain regulations place on innovation, the Emory Corporate Governance & Accountability Review decided to publish this "Law & Innovation" themed issue.

To examine the growing tension between the United States' large administrative state and innovators' desires for progress, ECGAR asked whether the administrative state could itself innovate to promote innovation. Four experts were chosen to answer this question. Three responded by investigating regulatory schemes...