Maclean: Rethinking Law as Process: Creativity, Novelty, Change

Dr. James Maclean of the University of Southampton Law School has published a new book entitled Rethinking Law as Process: Creativity, Novelty, Change, (Routledge, 2013).

Here is the abstract:

Rethinking Law as Process draws on insights from ‘process philosophy’ in order to rethink the nature of legal decision-making. While there have been significant developments in the application of ‘process’ thought across a number of disciplines, little notice has been taken of Whiteheadian metaphysics in law. Nevertheless, process thought offers significant opportunities for serious inquiry into the nature of legal reasoning and the practical application of law. Focusing on the practices of organising, rather than their effects, an increased processual awareness re-orients understanding away from the mechanistic and rationalist assumptions of Newtonian thought, and towards the interminable ontological quest to arrest or to classify the essentially undivided flow of human experience. Drawing together insights from a number of different fields, James Maclean argues that it is because our inherited conceptual framework is tied to a ‘static’ way of thinking that every attempt to offer justifying reasons for legal decisions appears at best to register only at the level of explanation. Rethinking Law as Process resolves this problem, and so provides a more adequate description of the nature of law and legal decision-making, by repositioning law within a thoroughly processual world-view, in which there is only the continuous effort to refine and to redefine the continuous flux of legal understanding.

This book could provide a theoretical framework for research on a number of recent developments in legal technology, law practice, and legal education, including legal decision support systems, legal compliance systems, norm development in multiagent systems, the unbundling of legal services, legal process management, and innovation in legal technology, law practice, legal services delivery, and legal education.

HT @law_book

Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier on Big Data and Law

Professor Dr. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger of the Oxford Internet Institute and Kenneth Neil Cukier of The Economist gave a presentation entitled Big Data — and Its Dark Side, 6 March 2013, at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

The presentation concerned their new book entitled Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think (Houghton Mifflin, 2013).

The presentation includes some examples concerning legal data, including an analysis of topics discussed in proceedings of the British House of Commons, a study of the association between the ideology and citation practices of U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and predictive policing.

Ossowski (ed.): Agreement Technologies

Springer has published an article collection entitled Agreement Technologies (2013), edited by Professor Dr. Sascha Ossowski of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.

The book is volume 8 in the the Law, Governance and Technology Series.

Here are excerpts from the preface:

This book describes the state of the art in the emerging field of Agreement Technologies (AT). AT refer to computer systems in which autonomous software agents negotiate with one another, typically on behalf of humans, in order to come to mutually acceptable agreements. [...]

The book was produced in the framework of [the EU-funded] COST Action IC0801 on Agreement Technologies.

This book [...] is subdivided into seven parts.

• Part I is dedicated to foundational issues of Agreement Technologies, examining the notion of agreement and agreement processes from different perspectives. [...]
• Part II outlines the relevance of novel approaches to Semantics and ontological alignments in distributed settings.
• Part III gives an overview of approaches for modelling norms and normative systems, the simulation of their dynamics, and their
  impact on the other key areas of Agreement Technologies.
• Part IV discusses how to design computational organisations, how to reason about them, and how organisational models can be evolved.
• Part V gives an overview of current approaches to argumentation and negotiation, and how they can be used to inform human reasoning, as well as to assist machine reasoning.
• Part VI describes different models and mechanisms of trust and reputation, and discusses their relevance for the other key areas of Agreement Technologies. [...]
• Part VII provides examples of how the techniques outlined in the previous parts of the book can be used to build distributed software applications that solve real-world problems.

Please notice that the parts are supported by a set of video-lectures that can be freely downloaded from the web.

Papaloi et al.: Blending Social Media with Parliamentary Websites: An Approach to e-Participation

Aspasia Papaloi of the Hellenic Parliament, Eleni Revekka Staiou of the University of Athens, and Professor Dr. Dimitris Gouscos of the University of Athens, have published Blending Social Media with Parliamentary Websites: Just a Trend, or a Promising Approach to e-Participation?, in Christopher G. Reddick, Stephen K. Aikins (Editors), Web 2.0 Technologies and Democratic Governance (pp. 259-275) (Springer 2012), volume 1 of the series Public Administration and Information Technology.

Here is the abstract:

This chapter discusses how social media use can enhance interaction between citizens and parliaments. The presence of parliamentary institutions in Europe and the Americas in social media is researched and quantitatively assessed. A specific question, on the citizen side, is to what extent social media is used by parliaments for informative purposes only, or for more substantial forms of citizen feedback. The ways in which parliaments can change to use social media for transparency and citizen engagement are therefore investigated. This chapter contributes to the research on using social media to enhance transformation of public bodies and citizen participation for democratic governance.

Nobles and Schiff: Observing Law Through Systems Theory

Professor Richard Nobles, LL.M., and Professor David Schiff, both of Queen Mary University of London School of Law, have published Observing Law Through Systems Theory (Hart, 2012).

Here is the publisher’s description:

This book uses Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory to explore how the legal system operates as one of modern society’s subsystems.

The authors demonstrate how this theory alters our understanding of some of the most important and controversial issues within law: the nature of judicial communication and legal argument; the claim that it can be right to disobey law; the character of legal pluralism and globalisation; time and its construction within law; the significance of the rule of law and human rights and the role of appeals to, and within, law.

Systems theory enables the authors to demonstrate how the legal system observes its own operations through its own communications, and how this contrasts with the manner in which law is observed by other systems such as the media and politics.

In this context the authors explore the constraints imposed by systems, in particular the legal system, upon the individuals who participate in them.

I look forward to reading this book and comparing the authors’ perspective with Habermas’s criticism of Luhmann in Between Facts and Norms.

HT @judicialphil

New book by Richard Susskind: Tomorrow’s Lawyers

Professor Dr. Richard Susskind has published a new book entitled Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future (Oxford University Press, 2013).

The book is available now in the UK, and will be available next month in the U.S.

Here is the publisher’s description:

In his newest provocative and forward-looking volume on the legal profession, Richard Susskind — the best-selling author of The End of Lawyers? and The Future of Law –predicts fundamental and irreversible changes in the world of law. What Susskind sees is eye-opening-a legal world of virtual courts, Internet-based global legal businesses, online document production, commoditized service, legal process outsourcing, and web-based simulated practice. Legal markets will be liberalized, with new jobs for lawyers and new employers too.

Tomorrow’s Lawyers is a definitive guide to this future–for young and aspiring lawyers, and for all who want to modernize our legal and justice systems. It introduces the new legal landscape and offers practical guidance for those who intend to build careers and businesses in law. Susskind identifies the key drivers of change, such as the economic downturn, and considers how these will shape the legal marketplace. He then sketches out the new legal landscape as he envisions it, highlighting the changing role of law firms-and in-house lawyers-and the coming of virtual hearings and online dispute resolution. He also suggests solutions to major concerns within the legal profession, such as diminishing public funding, and explores alternative roles for future lawyers in a world increasingly dominated by IT. And what are the prospects for aspiring lawyers? Susskind predicts what new jobs and new employers there will be, equipping prospective lawyers with penetrating questions to put to their current and future bosses.

Tomorrow’s Lawyers is an essential roadmap to the future of law for those who want to survive the rapidly changing legal landscape.

Features

• The first introduction for young and aspiring lawyers to the new legal landscape and how to succeed in it
• A revised and updated vision of the future, by one of the world’s leading experts whose past predictions for the law have generally come to pass
• Provides solutions to major concerns within the legal profession, such as diminishing public funding, and explores alternative roles for future lawyers in a world increasingly dominated by IT
• Identifies new employers for lawyers of the future and equips young lawyers with questions to ask prospective employers

Neil Rose has a new summary of the book at Legal Futures: Susskind: no future for high street firms, but window of opportunity for mid-sized practices.

HT @charonqc

Epstein, Landes, and Posner: The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice

Professor Dr. Lee Epstein, Professor Dr. William M. Landes, and Senior Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner, have published The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice (Harvard University Press, 2013).

Here is the publisher’s description:

Judges play a central role in the American legal system, but their behavior as decision-makers is not well understood, even among themselves. The system permits judges to be quite secretive (and most of them are), so indirect methods are required to make sense of their behavior. Here, a political scientist, an economist, and a judge work together to construct a unified theory of judicial decision-making. Using statistical methods to test hypotheses, they dispel the mystery of how judicial decisions in district courts, circuit courts, and the Supreme Court are made.

The authors derive their hypotheses from a labor-market model, which allows them to consider judges as they would any other economic actors: as self-interested individuals motivated by both the pecuniary and non-pecuniary aspects of their work. In the authors’ view, this model describes judicial behavior better than either the traditional “legalist” theory, which sees judges as automatons who mechanically apply the law to the facts, or the current dominant theory in political science, which exaggerates the ideological component in judicial behavior. Ideology does figure into decision-making at all levels of the federal judiciary, the authors find, but its influence is not uniform. It diminishes as one moves down the judicial hierarchy from the Supreme Court to the courts of appeals to the district courts. As The Behavior of Federal Judges demonstrates, the good news is that ideology does not extinguish the influence of other components in judicial decision-making.

HT @law_book

Nabatchi, Gastil, et al. on Evaluating the Practice and Impact of Deliberative Civic Engagement

Professor Dr. Tina Nabatchi of the Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Professor Dr. John Gastil of the Penn State University Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, and colleagues, have edited a new book entitled Democracy in Motion: Evaluating the Practice and Impact of Deliberative Civic Engagement (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Full text of some portions of the book are available on Google Books.

Several of the chapters discuss evaluation of law-related deliberation, particularly regarding ballot initiatives, and at times with reference to empirical research on jury deliberations.

Here is an excerpt from the publisher’s description:

Democracy in Motion represents the first comprehensive attempt to assess the practice and impact of deliberative civic engagement. Organized in a series of chapters that address the big questions of deliberative civic engagement, it uses theory, research, and practice from around the world to explore what we know about, how we know it, and what remains to be understood.

Here is the table of contents:

1. Introduction to Deliberative Civic Engagement / Tina Nabatchi
2. Mapping Deliberative Civic Engagement: Pictures From a (R)evolution / Matt Leighninger
3. Who Deliberates? Recruitment and Participation in Deliberative Civic Engagement / David Ryfe and Brittany Stalsburg
4. How People Communicate During Deliberative Events / Laura Black
5. Deliberative Inclusion in Multicultural Societies / Alice Siu and Dragan M. Stanisevski
6. Online Deliberation Design: Choices, Criteria, and Evidence / Todd Davies and Reid Chandler
7. Does Deliberation Make Better Citizens? / Heather Pincock
8. Deliberation’s Contribution to Community Capacity-Building / Bo I. Kinney
9. Assessing the Policy Impacts of Deliberative Civic Engagement / Gregory Barrett, Miriam Wyman, and Vera Schattan P. Coehlo
10. Evaluating Deliberative Public Events and Projects / John Gastil, Katie Knobloch, and Meghan B. Kelly
11. Listening and Responding to Critics of Deliberative Civic Engagement
    / Loren Collingwood and Justin Reedy
12. Advancing the Theory and Practice of Deliberative Civic Engagement: A Secular Hymnal / Michael Weiksner, John Gastil, Tina Nabatchi, and Matt Leighninger

Parkinson and Mansbridge, eds.: Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale

Professor Dr. John Parkinson of the University of Warwick Faculty of Politics and International Studies, and Professor Dr. Jane J. Mansbridge of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, have co-edited Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Here is the publisher’s description of the book:

‘Deliberative democracy’ is often dismissed as a set of small-scale, academic experiments. This volume seeks to demonstrate how the deliberative ideal can work as a theory of democracy on a larger scale. It provides a new way of thinking about democratic engagement across the spectrum of political action, from towns and villages to nation states, and from local networks to transnational, even global systems. Written by a team of the world’s leading deliberative theorists, Deliberative Systems explains the principles of this new approach, which seeks ways of ensuring that a division of deliberative labour in a system nonetheless meets both deliberative and democratic norms. Rather than simply elaborating the theory, the contributors examine the problems of implementation in a real world of competing norms, competing institutions and competing powerful interests. [...]

Here is the table of contents:

1. A systemic approach to deliberative democracy / Jane Mansbridge, James Bohman, Simone Chambers, Thomas Christiano, Archon Fung, John Parkinson, Dennis F. Thompson and Mark E. Warren
2. Rational deliberation among experts and citizens / Thomas Christiano
3. Deliberation and mass democracy / Simone Chambers
4. Representation in the deliberative system / James Bohman
5. Two trust-based uses of minipublics in democratic systems / Michael K. MacKenzie and Mark E. Warren
6. On the embeddedness of deliberative systems: why elitist innovations matter more / Yannis Papadopoulos
7. Democratizing deliberative systems / John Parkinson

The book includes discussion of democratic deliberation about legal matters, including citizens’ participation in jury deliberations, constitutional drafting, the legislative process, and ballot measures, including by such processes as the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review.

Scalia and Garner on Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court and Bryan A. Garner, Esq., of LawProse have published Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (West, 2012).

Here is the publisher’s description of the book:

[...] Scalia and Garner systematically explain all the most important principles of constitutional, statutory, and contractual interpretation in an engaging and informative style – with hundreds of illustrations from actual cases. Is a burrito a sandwich? Is a corporation entitled to personal privacy? If you trade a gun for drugs, are you “using a gun” in a drug transaction? The authors grapple with these and dozens of equally curious questions while explaining the most principled, lucid, and reliable techniques for deriving meaning from authoritative texts. Meanwhile, the book takes up some of the most controversial issues in modern jurisprudence. [...]