Engineering, Law, and Policy Systems

Catalog description

This course provides a broad exploration of the relationship between engineering, policy, and law. From driverless cars to AI-powered systems, engineering is transforming public and private spaces. As these new technologies leave the lab and operate in new spaces, each new technology represents a system within that larger, higher-order system. The transformation of these spaces and the interaction of these once-separate systems will be shaped by, and in turn will shape, the public policies of local, state, national, and global policymaking systems. This interdisciplinary course has two objectives. First, it considers the classic engineering problem of integrating subsystems into a larger, higher-order system. In this class, the larger system includes not only other physical systems in the operating space, but also social, legal, and political systems. Second, it considers traditional legal and policymaking institutions as constrained optimization problems. This course identifies the legal and political constraints engineering solutions must satisfy in order to come online.