Technologies and the Rule of Law: Disruptions, Dependencies, Directions

For nearly five centuries, the Rule of Law has been shaped by the materiality of print. The architecture of legal systems evolved alongside the affordances of printed text. Stability, publicity, contestability, and reason-giving became cornerstones of legality in a world where law was inscribed on paper. 
 
Today, that world is rapidly dissolving. 
 
The rise of new technologies transforms not only how law is practiced, but also how normativity itself is structured. The shift from print to code affords opacity instead of transparency, prediction instead of deliberation, optimisation instead of justification, behavioural modulation instead of normative address. 
 
How should the Rule of Law be rearticulated in an era of algorithmic governance? Can legality survive when norms are embedded in technological infrastructures? What happens to legal subjectivity when human and machine agency intertwine? 
 
These are just some of the questions that will be dealt with at the Spring Symposium of the Netherlands Association for the Philosophy of Law, kindly hosted by the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice and organized by Cees Zweistra, Julie Hoppenbrouwers, Thomas Riesthuis and Lukas van den Berge. 
 
The conference will take place in Utrecht on Friday 17 April, 12:30-17:00.