Is Law Computable?: Critical Perspectives on Law and Artificial Intelligence

✍ Scribed by Simon Deakin; Christopher Markou (editors)

• Publisher: Hart Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 343
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

What does computable law mean for the autonomy, authority and legitimacy of the legal system? Are we witnessing a shift from Rule of Law to a new Rule of Technology? Should we even build these things in the first place?
This unique volume collects original papers by a group of leading international scholars to address some of the fascinating questions raised by the encroachment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into more aspects of legal process, administration and culture. Weighing near-term benefits against the longer-term, and potentially path-dependent, implications of replacing human legal authority with computational systems, this volume pushes back against the more uncritical accounts of AI in law and the eagerness of scholars, governments, and LegalTech developers, to overlook the more fundamental – and perhaps ‘bigger picture’ – ramifications of computable law.
Is Law Computable? includes contributions by Simon Deakin, Christopher Markou, Mireille Hildebrandt, Roger Brownsword, Sylvie Delacroix, Lyria Bennett Moses, Ryan Abbott, Jennifer Cobbe, Lily Hands, John Morison, Alex Sarch and Dilan Thampapillai.

✦ Table of Contents

Foreword
Contents
About the Contributors
1. From Rule of Law to Legal Singularity
I. The Dawn of the All New Everything
II. From Rule of Law to Legal Singularity
III. The Origins of Digital Computation
IV. The Leibniz Dream and Mathematisation of Law
V. Calculemus! Leibniz's Influence on Law
VI. Characteristica Universalis Lex
VII. Computationalism and the Mathematisation of Reality
VIII. Chapter Overview
IX. Conclusion
2. Ex Machina Lex: Exploring the Limits of Legal Computability
I. Methodology
II. Machine Learning (ML)
III. Deep Learning (DL)
IV. Natural Language Processing (NLP)
V. Exploring the Limits of AI in Law
VI. Law as Algorithm: Exploring the Limits of 'Computable Law'
VII. Conclusion
3. Code-driven Law: Freezing the Future and Scaling the Past
I. Introduction
II. What Code-driven Law Does
III. The Nature of Code-driven Normativity
IV. Legal Certainty and the Nature of Code
V. 'Legal by Design' and 'Legal Protection by Design'
VI. Legal Protection by Design
VII. Finals: the Issue of Countability and Control
4. Towards a Democratic Singularity? Algorithmic Governmentality, the Eradication of Politics – And the Possibility of Resistance
I. The Disappointments of Democracy in an Internet Age
II. From Surveillance to Algorithmic Governmentality
III. Algorithmic Governmentality and Democracy – the Power of 'Inference'
IV. Resistance – Our Puny Efforts?
V. Law, Regulation and Governance – What is to be Done?
5. Legal Singularity and the Reflexivity of Law
I. Introduction
II. Legal Singularity, Legal AI, and Legal Tech
III. Reflexivity
IV. Automating the Law
V. Conclusion
6. Artificial Intelligence and Legal Singularity: The Thin End of the Wedge, the Thick End of the Wedge, and the Rule of Law
I. Introduction
II. AI and Legal Functions: From the Thin End of the Wedge to the Thick End of the Wedge
III. Rethinking Regulatory Responsibilities
IV. Reworking the Rule of Law
V. New Coherentism
VI. Reviewing Institutional Arrangements and Expectations
VII. Conclusion
7. Automated Systems and the Need for Change
I. Introduction
II. Automated Systems, Moral Stances and the Under-appreciated Need for Change
III. Habit Acquisition, Habit Reversal and Socio-moral Change
IV. The Impact of Moral Realism and Perfectionism
V. Questioning the Desirability of Autonomous Artificial Moral Agents
VI. Conclusion
8. Punishing Artificial Intelligence: Legal Fiction or Science Fiction
I. Artificial Intelligence and Punishment
II. The Affirmative Case
III. Retributive and Conceptual Limitations
IV. Feasible Alternatives
9. Not a Single Singularity
I. The Idea of Artificial 'Intelligence' and the Singularity
II. Automation of Legal Tasks and the Legal Singularity
III. A Three-dimensional Challenge
IV. What Kind of Technology Could Replace Judges?
V. Conclusion
10. The Law of Contested Concepts? Reflections on Copyright Law and the Legal and Technological Singularities
I. Dual Singularities: Technological and Legal
II. Copyright as a Functionally Incomplete Property System
III. Copyright and the Robot Judge? The Fair Use Example
IV. Conclusion
11. Capacitas Ex Machina: Are Computerised Assessments of Mental Capacity a 'Red Line' or Benchmark for AI?
I. Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems in Medicine
II. Automating Psychological Assessment and Diagnosis
III. IF Computers Can Make Medical Decisions, THEN Should They?
IV. Mental Capacity in England and Wales
V. Computational Logic and the Essential Humanity of Capacity Assessments
VI. Conclusion: The Map is not Territory
Glossary and Further Reading
Index