Technology Humans And Discontent With Law

"This book analyses discontent with law and assesses the prospect of better governance by technology. In the first part of the book, where the context is 'low tech', the range of discontent with law is examined; the underlying reasons for such discontent are identified (namely, the human nature of the legal enterprise, its reliance on rules, and the pluralistic nature of human communities); and the reasonableness of such discontent is assessed. In the second part of the book, where the context is 'high-tech' (with new tools becoming available to undertake governance functions), the question is whether discontent with law is further provoked or, to the contrary, is eased. While new technologies provoke further discontent with law's claimed authority, its ineffectiveness, and its principles, positions, and policies, they also promise more effective and efficient ways of achieving order. The book closes with some reflections on the ambivalence that humans might experience when faced with the choice between law's governance and apparently better performing governance by technology. That law's governance is imperfect is undeniable; that humans should quest after better governance is right; but, the shape of our technological futures is unclear. This accessibly written book will appeal to scholars and students who are working in the broad, and burgeoning, field of law, regulation and technology; as well as to legal theorists, political scientists and sociologists with interests in the impact of new technology"--

This book analyses discontent with law and assesses the prospect of better governance by technology. In the first part of the book, where the context is ‘low tech’, the range of discontent with law is examined; the underlying reasons for such discontent are identified (namely, the human nature of the legal enterprise, its reliance on rules, and the pluralistic nature of human communities); and the reasonableness of such discontent is assessed. In the second part of the book, where the context is ‘high-tech’ (with new tools becoming available to undertake governance functions), the question is whether discontent with law is further provoked or, to the contrary, is eased. While new technologies provoke further discontent with law’s claimed authority, its ineffectiveness, and its principles, positions, and policies, they also promise more effective and efficient ways of achieving order. The book closes with some reflections on the ambivalence that humans might experience when faced with the choice between law’s governance and apparently better performing governance by technology. That law’s governance is imperfect is undeniable; that humans should quest after better governance is right; but, the shape of our technological futures is unclear. This accessibly written book will appeal to scholars and students who are working in the broad and burgeoning field of law, regulation, and technology, as well as to legal theorists, political scientists, and sociologists with interests in the impact of new technology.

Law, Human Agency and Autonomic Computing interrogates the legal implications of the notion and experience of human agency implied by the emerging paradigm of autonomic computing, and the socio-technical infrastructures it supports. The development of autonomic computing and ambient intelligence – self-governing systems – challenge traditional philosophical conceptions of human self-constitution and agency, with significant consequences for the theory and practice of constitutional self-government. Ideas of identity, subjectivity, agency, personhood, intentionality, and embodiment are all central to the functioning of modern legal systems. But once artificial entities become more autonomic, and less dependent on deliberate human intervention, criteria like agency, intentionality and self-determination, become too fragile to serve as defining criteria for human subjectivity, personality or identity, and for characterizing the processes through which individual citizens become moral and legal subjects. Are autonomic – yet artificial – systems shrinking the distance between (acting) subjects and (acted upon) objects? How ‘distinctively human’ will agency be in a world of autonomic computing? Or, alternatively, does autonomic computing merely disclose that we were never, in this sense, ‘human’ anyway? A dialogue between philosophers of technology and philosophers of law, this book addresses these questions, as it takes up the unprecedented opportunity that autonomic computing and ambient intelligence offer for a reassessment of the most basic concepts of law.

In the context of the technological disruption of law and, in particular, the prospect of governance by machines, this book reconsiders the demand that we should respect the law, simply because it is the law. What does ‘the law’ need to look like to justify our respect? Responding to this question, the book takes the form of a dialectic between, on the one side, the promise of the prospectus for law and, on the other, the discontent provoked by the performance of law in practice; this is followed by a synthesis. Four pictures of law are considered: two are traditional pictures – law as order and law as just order; and two are prompted by the technological disruption of law – law as governance by machines and law as self-governance by humans. These pictures are tested in five performance areas: contract law, criminal law, biolaw, information law, and constitutional law. The synthesis, revealing the complexity of the demand for respect, highlights three particular points. First, the only prospectus for law that clearly commands respect is one that is committed to protecting the global commons (the preconditions for humans to form their own communities with their own forms of governance); second, any form of governance by humans will invite reservations and push-back against the demand for respect; and, third, governance by machines is not so much a superior form of governance as a radically different form in which questions about respect are redundant. This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in the broad and burgeoning field of law, regulation and technology, as well as to legal theorists, practitioners, and others interested in the impact of new technology on law.

This book offers a radically different introduction to law, one that reflects the challenges and opportunities presented by the rapid technological developments of our time. Traditionally, law has been about historic principles and rules and their application to a particular set of facts; and courts, judges, and disputes have been central to the legal enterprise. Against this approach, this book highlights four radical and revisionist ideas: by bringing modern technologies into the foreground; by presenting law as one particular mode of governance in a larger picture of governance that now includes technological modalities; by insisting that we have to think outside the traditional doctrinal box to engage with a broad range of governance questions; and by emphasising that human communities cannot flourish without good governance to which both lawyers and law are central. These four radical threads are woven into a discussion of the modern landscape of law, and together they offer a distinctly contemporary contribution to the quest for good governance. The challenge for lawyers now, the book maintains, is to contribute to thinking, both locally and globally, about how we take advantage of the opportunities presented by the newest technology, without compromising the essential conditions for human life and co-existence, and without losing what we value in law’s governance. This book is aimed at students who are studying law at university and legal academics, and others, interested in the current and future impact of technology on law.

Law can keep up with rapid technological change by reflecting our evolving understanding of how humans use language to cooperate.

Placing contemporary technological developments in their historical context, this book argues for the importance of law in their regulation. Technological developments are focused upon overcoming physical and human constraints. There are no normative constraints inherent in the quest for ongoing and future technological development. In contrast, law proffers an essential normative constraint. Just because we can do something, does not mean that we should. Through the application of critical legal theory and jurisprudence to pro-actively engage with technology, this book demonstrates why legal thinking should be prioritised in emerging technological futures. This book articulates classic skills and values such as ethics and justice to ensure that future and ongoing legal engagements with socio-technological developments are tempered by legal normative constraints. Encouraging them to foreground questions of justice and critique when thinking about law and technology, the book addresses law students and teachers, lawyers and critical thinkers concerned with the proliferation of technology in our lives.

This insightful book presents a radical rethinking of the relationship between law, regulation, and technology. While in traditional legal thinking technology is neither of particular interest nor concern, this book treats modern technologies as doubly significant, both as major targets for regulation and as potential tools to be used for legal and regulatory purposes. It explores whether our institutions for engaging with new technologies are fit for purpose.