Editorial Note: An Introduction to the EQPAM Special Issue on Legal Requirements for Complex Sociotechnical Systems (original) (raw)
Related papers
EQPAM Special Issue on Legal Requirements for Complex Sociotechnical Systems
European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities (EQPAM), 2019
This Special Issue of the European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities (EQPAM) presents a collection of papers contributing to the understanding of the increasingly relevant topic of legal requirements analysis and engineering in complex sociotechnical contexts, with an eye to the complex intertwining between law and technological systems development and implementation for the public service provision. https://sites.google.com/a/fspub.unibuc.ro/european-quarterly-of-political-attitudes-and-mentalities/
2008
Abstract Legal prescriptions are increasingly impacting on information systems and on organisations that must comply with them in order to avoid to be prosecuted or fined. Addressing law compliance in early phases of the requirements analysis helps in improving the alignment of information systems with the law. In this paper, we point out ontological differences between legal concepts and requirements and set the basis for a systematic process able to support decision making about requirements for law compliant systems.
First International Workshop on Requirements Engineering and Law (RELAW)
2008 Requirements Engineering and Law, 2008
Requirements engineering is the practice of identifying and specifying system requirements to achieve a specific purpose. Government laws and regulations are written to achieve societal goals, and thus have a direct impact on system requirements and designs. Engineers and regulators need methods and tools to focus the discussion of legal compliance in terms of observable criteria to ensure that systems comply with relevant laws. The First International Workshop on Requirements Engineering and Law was held in conjunction with the 16 th IEEE Requirements Engineering Conference in Barcelona, Spain. The purpose of this workshop was to bring together researchers, lawyers and engineers to coordinate discussion on emerging issues in this area. This report summarizes the workshop structure, the paper discussions and break-out session that yielded important terminology and future research goals.
Law and Technology: Interactions and Relationships
Minnesota journal of law, science & technology, 2007
The relations between law and technology are both simple and exceedingly complex. At the most elementary level, technology consists in the application of labor to create a product, to generate a service or otherwise to produce a desired result. Technology develops as ways are found to produce new results or to produce old results using fewer or less costly inputs. Law is generally understood to exist as a set of rules adopted by a society’s governing institutions that are applicable to all of its inhabitants.1 All modern societies have established
Technology developments change the way we conceive the normative force of law and legal systems. Traditionally based on written texts, and on their interpretation by a professional class of jurists, normativity seems nowadays to migrate into technological devices, increasing the performative effect of regulation. This shift calls into question the "flexibility" of law as a fundamental performance of the rule of law and of constitutional democracy. These problems can only be addressed by taking into consideration the multifactorial prism of regulation, in a pluralistic dimension that has been highlighted by studies on the architectural dimension of cyberspace and, in particular , on the "code". In this perspective, asserting that technological devices are sheer "instruments" divested of normative implications is anything but an illusion: their regu-lative force, in fact, is embedded in their own "design" from the outset. Before envisaging scenarios dominated by ungovernable technology, it is therefore useful to emphasize the "responsibility" of coders and operators. In this way, the question of human responsibility re-emerges as a crucial factor for the elaboration of a normative framework that preserves the conditions of an intersubjective coexistence marked by freedom.
Law and Technology in the Dimension of Time
Time, Law and Change, Hart Publishing, 2020
The relationship between law and technology in the dimension of time is a popular theme in legal and policy circles, usually recurring as a critique of outdated laws. In these debates, law is most often portrayed as falling behind technology as both travel together along the dimension of time. While such images simplify the relationship between law and technological change, they reflect some insight into the challenge faced in ensuring law remains relevant, appropriate, comprehensive, well-adapted and clear in the face of an ever-evolving socio-legal-technical landscape. Law’s struggle in the face of socio-technical change has been referred to as the pacing problem or the challenge of regulatory connection. A phenomenon that receives much less attention in these popular debates is the temporal impact of attempts to embed the law and social values into technological design. There are a variety of terms that capture ideas around design-based regulation, each with different foci and associated literature. For example, ‘value sensitive design’ focuses on the design process, while ‘compliance by design’ focuses on extracting, modelling and implementing legal requirements but both are about using architecture and processes to achieve a particular effect (respecting values or ensuring compliance with law). The idea of embedding law, values or preferences into technical design choices and business processes is rarely subjected to similar time-inspired critiques despite the fact that technology and procedures can be designed around outdated understandings of legal requirements and policy goals. Whether technology design decisions are based on technical, commercial, legal or regulatory objectives and requirements (or combinations thereof), they may come to be seen as obsolete as those objectives and requirements evolve. Therefore, the challenge of staying up-to-date or continuing to fit in an evolving world is not only a legal challenge. Technology can also fail to meet evolving legal requirements or fail to adapt seamlessly to other technical elements within systems as the broader socio-legal environment evolves. In particular, law can impose particular demands on technology, so that it is called on to catch up.
Analysing Legal Information Requirements for Public Policy Making
2020
Most of the research that has been conducted in the area of legal informatics concerns its ‘supply side’, dealing with the development of effective systems for legal information provision. However, limited research has been conducted on the ‘demand side’ of legal information provision, though it is absolutely necessary to gain a good understanding of it, in order to design effective and useful systems for the provision of legal information; furthermore, this limited research is dealing with the legal information needs of the lawyers, and neglects the ones of other important groups. This paper contributes to filling this research gap. It analyses legal information requirements of a highly important for the society group: the designers of public policies. Initially we investigate current legal information sources and systems used by public policy makers, as well as their relevant search practices. Then we investigate their business needs for additional capabilities/functionalities for...
Law and Technology: Being Human in the World
Law, Technology and Humans, 2020
The first four papers in this issue come out of a project examining the relations between law, culture and things. They inquire into human links with the material world. These links are mediated through technology which, in its many forms, enables humans to fulfil material needs. Tools and their social organisation provide food, clothing, shelter and communication. This deep imbrication with all facets of our lives means that the ways technology is used and organised have profound importance for humanity and the environment. Technologies can be categorised as ‘hard’, involving manufacture and transport; ‘soft’ information and communication technologies; and ‘wet’ technologies of human sustenance, such as food production and preparation. Law regulates or constitutes each of these in one way or another, while it is most often associated with soft technologies used in record-keeping and artificial intelligence. This collection of papers examines the use of soft technology in law, as we...
A Bump in the Road. Ruling Out Law from Technology
Human Law and Computer Law: Comparative Perspectives, 2013
This article discusses the challenge posed by the upcoming fi eld of technoregulation to the study of law and its relation to new technologies. Technoregulation is often hailed as a new legislative tool for the intentional regulation of human behavior by means of technology. Instead of making law redundant, technoregulation could give a new impetus to classical debates in legal theory about the nature of law, by adding questions about the medium of law investigated in the light of the practice turn. If one understands law as a practice, what does this mean for the distinction between medium and content, which seems to underlie much of the debate on technoregulation? Both Hartian practice theory that frames law as a system of 'incorporeal' rules and more material approaches that explain law in terms of its mediality are analyzed. These will be discussed in the light of Latour's studies of the specifi cities of legal practices and technological practices, which seem to supersede the extremes assumed by both.
A Legal Analysis of Socio-Technological Change Arising Out of eObjects
A new model, or “third wave”, of computing is emerging, based on the widespread use of processors with data handling and communications capabilities embedded in a variety of objects and environments that were not previously computerised. Various terms have been used to describe this third wave, including “ubiquitous” and “pervasive” computing, “ambient intelligence”, and the “Internet of Things”. A previous paper coined the term “eObjects” for the central element of this third wave, and developed a technical framework for research into legal, business and policy issues arising from this trend, based on the attributes of, and interactions between, eObjects. The implementation and use of eObjects contain some significant innovations. With the socio-technological change brought about by these innovations, comes the possibility of a disconnection between the law and the new things, activities, and relationships enabled by eObjects. This second paper proposes a theoretical framework through which to analyse the impact of this change and the legal problems that may arise. It then continues on to marry the technical and theoretical framework in order to examine the key innovations arising from the attributes of eObjects and begins the process of uncovering and analysing legal problems that may arise.