by Roger Brownsword (Author)
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.