Counting as a Human Being in the Era of Computational Law

Project Information

CoHuBiCoL

Grant agreement ID: 788734

DOI

10.3030/788734

Project closed

EC signature date 16 May 2018

Start date 1 January 2019

End date 31 December 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 559 916,25

EU contribution

€ 2 492 433,00

Coordinated by

VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - CoHuBiCoL (Counting as a Human Being in the Era of Computational Law)

Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2023-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project investigates how the prominence of counting and computation transforms the assumptions, operations and outcomes of the law. It targets two types of computational ‘law’: data-driven systems (e.g. machine learning), and code-driven systems (e.g. code as rules initiatives) and their hybrids. We put ‘law’ between inverted commas to highlight that one of the research questions is whether the integration of these systems into legal practice should result in qualifying the output of such systems as law, giving them legal effect. The overarching goal is to develop a new hermeneutics for computational ‘law’, enabling a new practice of interpretation on the cusp of law and computer science.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We have

- PUBLISHED a VOCABULARY with working definitions of the FOUNDATIONAL LEGAL CONCEPTS that are constitutive of both the vocabulary and the grammar of modern positive law, to help developers understand how and why law matters when creating legal technologies: https://publications.cohubicol.com/vocabularies/law/

- PUBLISHED a VOCABULARY with working definitions of KEY CONCEPTS in computer science, to help lawyers understand how and why computer science matters before and when deploying legal technologies: https://publications.cohubicol.com/vocabularies/cs/

- PUBLISHED an ONLINE WEBTOOL to MAP/COMPARE/ASSESS different types of legal technologies, in the form of a Typology of Legal Technologies that presents both lawyers and developers with a hands-on METHOD, MINDSET and RESOURCE

- PUBLISHED the Research Study on ‘TEXT-DRIVEN LAW’ (https://publications.cohubicol.com/research-studies/text-driven-law/) contributing to a better understanding of how the text-driven normativity of current law enables legal protection;

- PUBLISHED the Research Study on 'Computational Law' (https://publications.cohubicol.com/research-studies/computational-law/) contributing to a better understanding of the implications of integrating AI in the making of law

- PUBLISHED THE FIRST EVER DEDICATED TEXTBOOK ‘LAW FOR COMPUTER SCIENTISTS AND OTHER FOLK’, which is exemplary for COHUBICOL’S refusal to infantilize knowledge shared across disciplinary borders, offering the first comprehensive in-depth and nevertheless accessible textbook of law for CS, introducing law at both the foundational and the practical level (https://www.cohubicol.com/about/publications/law-for-computer-scientists-and-other-folk/);

- PUBLISHED AN IN-DEPTH INQUIRY INTO THE CROSS-OVER BETWEEN THE PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY AND LEGAL THEORY. Digisprudence: Code as Law Rebooted, which extends the treatment of affordance in legal theory scholarship, proposing an ecological view of legality that necessitates certain design standards be met by any code- or data-driven system – including those involved in legal practice. The proposed set of ‘digisprudential affordances’ are contextualised through real case studies, thus bridging the gap between legal theory and design practice in a novel way (https://www.cohubicol.com/about/publications/digisprudence-code-as-law-rebooted/);

- DEVELOPED THE PROJECT WEBSITE (www.cohubicol.com) that will be kept alive as a respository of the research output, offering an innovative way of sharing scientific output (https://publications.cohubicol.com);

- ORGANISED FOUR PHILOSOPHICAL SEMINARS with leading lawyers, philosophers and computer scientists, on the topics of Text-driven normativity and the rule of law (2019), Interpretability issues in machine learning (2020) and Legal effect of code-driven law (2021) and on the automation of data protection law (https://www.cohubicol.com/about/philosophers-seminars/).

- ORGANISED TWO MAJOR INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES in 2022 and 2023, to disseminate the project output and invite new types of conversations accross disciplinary borders between thoughtleaders in the domain of computational law: https://www.cohubicol.com/about/conference/

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The overarching aim of the project was to develop A NEW HERMENEUTICS FOR COMPUTATIONAL ‘LAW’, which implies DOING LEGAL THEORY WITH COMPUTER SCIENTISTS and a novel CROSS-DISCIPLINARY METHODOLOGY to rethink and reinvent legal method.

1. As part of a new hermeneutics for computational law, we developed dedicated VOCABULARIES OF COMPUTER SCIENCE TERMS and FOUNDATIONAL LEGAL CONCEPTS, to detect how the introduction of a new vocabulary may impact the meaning of the foundational legal concepts, see: https://publications.cohubicol.com/vocabularies/law grounded in the Research Study on Text-Driven Law: https://publications.cohubicol.com/research-studies/text-driven-law/ and: https://publications.cohubicol.com/vocabularies/cs/ see also the Research Study on Computational law: https://publications.cohubicol.com/research-studies/computational-law/.

2. The computer science vocabularies of code- and data-driven legal technologies were developed while constructing and configuring the TYPOLOGY OF LEGAL TECHNOLOGIES, a method, a mindset and a resource, meant to inform lawyers and developers of legal technologies about claimed and actual functionality.

3. To disseminate, develop and foster the cross-disciplinary method that is key to the new hermeneutics of computational law, the PI founded a new scientific journal, together with postdoctoral researcher Laurence Diver: the JOURNAL OF CROSS-DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH IN COMPUTATIONAL LAW (CRCL). The Journal is a peer reviewed online diamond Open Acces Journal, neither the authors nor the subscribers or visitors pay for access. See https://journalcrcl.org/crcl/index. The added value of the Journal is to be found in its unique format. After a paper has been accepted following double blind peer review by reviewers from the discipline(s) of the authors, the editors invite a brief cross-disciplinary reply by a scholar or scientist from ‘the other discipline’ that is followed by a response of the author(s).

4. Conceptual innovation
The proposal foregrounded three interrelated concepts as framing instruments to rethink the nature of law and the rule of law: (1) ‘affordances’ (2) ‘mode of existence’ of modern positive law and (3) ‘legal protection by design’ that highlights the need to deliberately design the emerging computational ICI in ways that safeguard and enhance legal protection rather than diminishing it, calling for close collaboration between lawyers and computers scientists. In the Research Study on Text-Driven Law, the COHUBICOL Team has explored the relevance of these framing concepts in the context of rethinking the foundational concepts of modern positive law, thus helping to demonstrate their added value, see https://publications.cohubicol.com/research-studies/text-driven-law/chapter-3/.

5. From the very beginning we invested in NEW WAYS OF PUBLISHING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, via our website www.cohubicol.com. This notably concerns the interrelated project outputs of the Typology, the Law and CS vocabs, and the two Research Studies. Though webtools and html text are not new in themselves, the integrated, dynamic and cross-referential nature of the COHUBICOL website turns it into an interesting example of how to share, present, navigate and access research findings.

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