University of Wollongong
Browse

Reassembling the legal: the wonders of modern science in court-related proceedings

Download (1.54 MB)
journal contribution
posted on 2024-11-14, 00:42 authored by Richard Mohr, Francesco Contini
The article analyses the ways in which technology and law disperse, channel and reassemble agency in ICT-enabled legal proceedings. It works from case studies of online civil claims in England and Italy, and the automatically issued speed camera fine process in Australia. Information and communication technologies affect legal procedures in three dimensions: legitimacy, efficacy and performativity. The law can legitimate ensembles of technological and performative procedures, but it cannot construct them by regulation. Technology is a distinct regulative regime that opens some channels of communication while closing others. Machines and software codes identify and admit participants and direct human activity. The focus on the performative explores the requirements of sense-making, by which participants recognise the context and the legal consequences of ICT-enabled procedures. The interfaces of law and technology rely on the interpretive context in which messages are understood as well as the legal forms in which they are transmitted. Each of these elements is essential to the circulation of agency between people and things that reassembles and constitutes legal and social relationships.

History

Citation

R. Mohr & F. Contini, 'Reassembling the legal: the wonders of modern science in court-related proceedings' (2011) 20 (4) Griffith Law Review 994-1019.

Journal title

GRIFFITH LAW REVIEW

Volume

20

Issue

4

Pagination

994-1019

Language

English

RIS ID

55890

Usage metrics

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC