Technology, Governance and Respect for the Law: Pictures at an Exhibition

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.