The Center has maintained a special focus on issues relating to genetics and the law for many years and offers unique resources to the student who is pursuing a specialty in biotechnology law. In 1991 it developed a Legal Research Agenda for the Human Genome Project under the direction of Professor Dennis S. Karjala (with funding support from the NIH's National Center for Human Genome Research). That report was published in 32(2) Jurimetrics 121-311 (1992). The Center has produced a steady flow of significant conferences and noteworthy publications since then.
The Executive Director of the Center, Professor Gary E. Marchant, holds a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of British Columbia. The impact of genetics on the law is a primary focus of much of his current research. The College of Law has an LL.M. Program in Biotechnology and Genomics , the first of its kind in the world. The Center's Law, Science, & Technology Certificate Program offers a biotechnology law specialization for students enrolled in the J.D. program at the College of Law.
The Center sponsors a regular series of symposia focusing on specific issues in genetics and the law. The first three of those symposia were co-sponsored by the SmithKline Beecham Corporation of Pennsylvania (SmithKline later merged with Glaxo Wellcome to form Glaxo SmithKline). The fourth symposium (in 2002) was co-sponsored by the Arizona Biomedical Institute and the ASU Research Park and the fifth symposium (in 2004) was co-sponsored by the ABA's Special Committee on Bioethics & the Law, the ASU Biodesign Institute, the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), and the International Genomics Consortium (IGC). The fifth symposium was funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute. For more information about these programs: