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Legal Informatics: Law and Technology

The document is a monograph on the intersection of law and computer science, specifically focusing on legal informatics. It discusses the evolution of technology in the legal field, the role of computers in decision-making, and the implications of information technology on legal practices. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of legal informatics as a tool for optimizing legal work and enhancing the application of law through technology.
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
43 views15 pages

Legal Informatics: Law and Technology

The document is a monograph on the intersection of law and computer science, specifically focusing on legal informatics. It discusses the evolution of technology in the legal field, the role of computers in decision-making, and the implications of information technology on legal practices. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of legal informatics as a tool for optimizing legal work and enhancing the application of law through technology.
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

1

UNIVERSITY OF HUÁNUCO
FACULTY OF LAW AND POLITICAL SCIENCES
ACADEMIC PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL OF
LAW AND POLITICAL SCIENCES

MONOGRAPH
THE LAW, THE MAN AND THE MACHINE
COMPUTER SCIENCE

COURSE: LEGAL INFORMATICS

TEACHER: MEJIA CAMPO AVELINO

STUDENT: YAÑEZ GONZALES ANGELA

HUÁNUCO – PERU
2022
2

INDEX

INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................3
LEGAL INFORMATICS.........................................................................................................................5
THE LAW, THE MAN AND THE MACHINE............................................................................5
MATTER, ENERGY AND INFORMATION..........................................................................................7
LAW, CYBERNETICS, COMPUTER SCIENCE......................................................................................8
COMPUTERS IN LAW....................................................................................................................10
COMPUTER SCIENCE............................................................................................................10
CONCLUSION...............................................................................................................................15
LITERATURE.....................................................................................................................................16
3

INTRODUCTION

Technology is, has been and will be the driving force behind humanity's progress.

In a society increasingly governed by algorithms, it is an urgent duty to analyze,

from the perspective of ethics and human rights, the impacts of technology on

people's lives.

The acceleration of history means that in just a few years we will experience

changes that did not occur in other centuries. A generation that has never travelled

by tram arrives at the Faculty of Law to find a world of computers and must make

its way in it.

If the young lawyer looks back on his contacts with computers, he will notice that

his experiences with the legal use of computers are in close proportion to his

relationship with other uses.

Over the last thirty years, various problems have been raised that relate law to

information technologies, but a satisfactory theoretical level has not yet been

achieved that would allow elucidating the main issues that arise from this

relationship. The influence of the first conceptualizations has been decisive until

now in the ways of understanding these phenomena that combine legal issues with

socio-historical problems and, although at first it allowed for interesting

developments from the research point of view, today they are unsustainable from a

theoretical perspective, insufficient to be able to carry out effective applications and

constitute an inertial obstacle to the development of these new areas

of knowledge.
4

Within legal computing, it is common to distinguish three fields, in increasing order

of complexity and, at the same time, in chronological order of appearance:

documentary computing, management computing and decision-making computing.

The first was welcomed by lawyers and jurists. The second generated some

resistance, which finally gave way to the advantages it offered. The third one

continues to make legal experts' hair stand on end and still provokes heated

controversies. But all of them, it must be noted, constitute different ways, different

intensities in the fulfillment of the same function, namely, that of receiving

information, processing it according to a program and offering the product of such

processing to the man of law. The differences, merely quantitative, reside in the

degree of complexity of the elaboration criteria contained in the program. In all

cases, however, the quality of the service provided by the computer depends, in

law as in other fields of human activity, on two factors: the representation of

knowledge and the inferential engine. The inferential engine is nothing other than

the logic that allows us to go from premises to conclusions. In this respect, the

legal material offers some specific difficulties: it is necessary to develop a logic that

takes into account certain normative constants, such as obligation, prohibition,

empowerment, action, omission, delegation, competence. Since the middle of the

century, deontic logic has sought to respond to these needs.


5

LEGAL INFORMATICS

THE LAW, THE MAN AND THE MACHINE

It is well known among men of law, the use of computers for the accumulation and

retrieval of information. But the idea that they should adopt decisions on their own

that invade the human privilege of doing justice seems to many to be utopian and

inadmissible and a source of the most serious dangers such as the

dehumanization of law and legal activity. However, decision-making informatics is

often presented as a collection of methods, means and proposals to assist the

human decision-maker in his task, and not to replace him. The degree of decision-

making power that man delegates to the machine depends on his own decision

and the result of a careful calculation of costs and benefits, which is also revocable

and modifiable at any time.

In the legal decision, the computer offers an opportunity and demands a price. The

first is the possibility of making numerous decisions in different cases in a

predictable, reliable and extremely rapid manner. The second involves determining

the type of problem to be solved, establishing limits on the diversity of cases,

explaining all the criteria to be used in decisions and adhering to the results. It is up
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to man to decide in each case whether the advantage offered to him is greater than

the price or whether the latter is too onerous; that is, it is a question of a balance of

costs and benefits. The prospects that legal computing will be preferred over

traditional decision-making techniques increase as the number of cases to be

resolved is greater, the diversity among them is less, the criteria used in the

decisions are less contaminated by ideological limitations and the interest involved

in each individual case is less significant. In cases of homicide, the computer

system would be unlikely since the conditions of the cases are very different and

the individual solution is extremely relevant. However, if it is a decision to

sentence, an auxiliary system would likely be in place to calculate prison time

based on the conditions usually considered by judges. Traffic violations are an

example of computerized criminal prosecution: the violation report is the

accusation and evidence, the defense is practically non-existent and the sanction

is proposed by the system to be voluntarily accepted in most cases.

MATTER, ENERGY AND INFORMATION

Matter is one of the possible states of energy, information is the way in which

energy can be used with greater power, a small amount of energy, used to support

and transmit the appropriate information, can obtain more transcendent results

than the strength of a hundred fighters or the materials used in the Great Wall of

China.

Information technology can enable essential changes in legal work, enabling the

fulfilment of aspirations for speed, precision, greater knowledge, transparency, etc.


7

But to achieve this, a difficult change is needed. Perhaps the best strategy is to

make partial, effective, and least resistant applications.

Thus, legal computing, which was a hope thirty years ago, is once again returning

to a profitable path. For its part, IT law must rethink its general problems. In a path

opposite to legal informatics, it requires a general conception of the meaning and

significance that information technologies have produced in society, understood

not as a set of means to carry out the same tasks but as producers of profound

transformations in the functional possibilities of society.

But in both cases, both in the application of technology in legal work and in the

legal transformations necessary to address new problems, what is clear is that

successful results will only be achieved through thought and education.

LAW, CYBERNETICS, COMPUTER SCIENCE

The relationship between cybernetics and general systems theory and computers

has not always been well understood by everyday language, which does not

usually delve into the methodological content of that discipline and which,

interested in the practical aspects of the use of computers, tends to consider them

as the center of everything that can be described as computer science, cybernetic

or systemic.

Computer law as a science that arises from cybernetics, as a science that deals

with the relationship between law and computer science from the point of view of

the set of rules, doctrine and jurisprudence, which will establish and regulate the

actions, processes, applications, legal relationships, in their complexity, of


8

computer science. But on the other hand, we find legal computing, which, aided by

computer law, makes this cooperation between computing and law valid.

Cybernetics arises from the appearance and development of cybernetics. This

discipline has been given several names, however, the most widely accepted has

been cybernetics, which was proposed in 1968 by Mario Lossano. He then started

with the idea of seeing the legal system within cybernetics, as a general science.

In this way we find as examples of application:

 Jurimetrics.- Discipline that has as its purpose or reason the possibility of

replacing the Judge by the computer, a purpose that is currently

unacceptable.

 Legal Informatics.- Discipline that no longer supports the replacement of the

judge by computers but rather the assistance, among others, to the

jurisdictional function by computers, allowing legal information to be

obtained more effectively and efficiently.

 Legal Modelling.- This discipline is like a hybrid resulting from the previous

ones, simply because in Legal Modelling we find two positions that give rise

to two disciplines, which are Modelling in the abstract and in the concrete.

The first has a theoretical character and existing relationships in a legal

system and between legal systems. And the second, tries to produce a

theory that replaces in whole or in part the action of man (the jurist or

Subjective Jurisdictional Body) by computers.


9

 Computer Law. -It is a science that arises from Law, for the study not only

of the legal norms that dictate and regulate the computer environment, but

also encompasses in this study all the doctrinal and jurisprudential material

that deals with this matter, to achieve better control, application and validity

of the computer field.

COMPUTERS IN LAW

A first way of understanding the relationship between law and information

technologies is to interpret it as the application of technological instruments to the

operations carried out by those who act in the field of law (lawyers, judges, experts,

etc.).

This conception of information technology as a tool used by “legal practitioners” is

usually referred to as Legal Informatics. By contrast, Computer Law refers to the

universality of problems that arise from the transformations that the law has been

carrying out as a result of the imposition of certain new activities that are carried

out in the social sphere and that require new regulations or a reinterpretation of

existing regulations in order to provide responses in the sense of justice.

Computers can enable essential changes in legal work, enabling the fulfilment of

aspirations for speed, precision, greater knowledge, transparency, etc. But to

achieve this, a difficult change must be made. Perhaps the best strategy is to make

partial, effective, and least resistant applications.

Thus, legal computing, which was a hope thirty years ago,

is once again returning to a profitable path.


10

COMPUTER SCIENCE
The word “computer science” comes from “information” and “automatic” and is

used to designate the treatment and management of information by means of

computers.

Legal Informatics is defined as a science that studies the correct use of electronic

devices, such as computers, in law; that is, the help that this use provides or

serves for the development and application of law.

It is important to note that computer law constitutes the set of norms, applications,

processes, and legal relationships that arise as a consequence of the application

and development of computer science. That is to say, computing in general from

this point of view is an object regulated by law. The use of these tools or

applications has meant a great change and modernism for professional lawyers

who in less than 10 years have gone from the typewriter to the computer using text

management programs such as Word and operating systems such as the old DOS,

Windows 98, and those that are on the advanced Windows XP). The lawyer must

use all technological advances at his disposal in order to achieve one of the

objectives that every jurist seeks: to provide a prompt, effective and timely

response for the Administration of Justice.

HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER

The computer appears as the typical instrument of the late twentieth century, but

its origins can be traced back much further and, depending on how deep we are

willing to dive, we will find a history of many thousands of years.


11

Computers are the most efficient calculating tools ever invented. They have

enough computing power, autonomy and processing speed to replace us in many

tasks, or allow us work dynamics that have never before been possible in history,

to the point of becoming indispensable today.

First generation: The initial generation of computers begins with the invention of

the first automatic calculating machines, which could be considered a “computer”.

They responded to the need during World War II to decipher secret enemy codes.

They were electronically based on valves and vacuum tubes. They could be

programmed using a set of simple instructions, which had to be supplied to the

system through punched paper or cardboard cards, as in Babbage's invention.

Second generation: The second generation represented a major change, as

vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors, allowing the machines to be made

much smaller and also reducing their electrical consumption.

These were also the first machines to have a programming language, such as the

famous FORTRAN. Thus, the punch card system soon became obsolete.

Third generation: The leap to the third generation was determined by the

invention of integrated circuits: they allowed the processing capacity of machines

to be increased and, if that were not enough, reduced their manufacturing costs.

These were circuits printed on silicon wafers, with small transistors and

semiconductors incorporated. This was the first step towards the miniaturization of

computers.
12

Fourth generation: The gradual integration of the previous electronic components

led to the appearance of microprocessors: new integrated circuits that bring

together all the fundamental elements of the computer and which soon began to be

called chips.

Thanks to them, computers could decentralize their logical-arithmetic operations.

For example, replacing silicon ring memory with chip memory was an important

step toward microcomputing. The first personal computers or PCs belonged to this

generation.

Fifth Generation: The most recent and current generation witnessed the greatest

diversification in the computer field in its entire history. It became portable,

lightweight and convenient, and even expanded its boundaries of use thanks to the

possibilities of computer networks.

The computer no longer even needs to be fixed in a room, but can travel in our

briefcases. Never before have processing speed, versatility and convenience

converged so much in the world of computers, allowing them to merge with

telephones (giving birth to the Smartphone) and with many other different formats.

Sixth generation: Little is known about the generation of computers to come.

Major advances in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and learning

algorithms promise a highly automated future with enormous industrial potential. In

it, the computer can stop being a device that accompanies us and start being

inside our own bodies.

The expected features for this generation of computers can be listed as follows:
13

 Inference and problem solving: ability for deductive and also inductive

inference, including conjectures based on incomplete knowledge.

 Knowledge management: ability to acquire, accumulate and use various

types of knowledge.

 Intelligent communication: a flexible and interactive link between man and

machine, capable of using natural language, graphics, images and other

forms of communication.

 Intelligent programming: ability to program itself intelligently; that is,

automatically convert problems into efficient programs for their solution.

CONCLUSION

Legal informatics is a set of computer applications in the legal field; it is an

interdisciplinary technique that aims at the study and research of knowledge

applicable to the recovery of legal information, as well as the development and use

of the tools for analysis and processing of legal information, necessary to achieve

such recovery.
14

It is a science that studies the use of electronic devices or physical elements, such

as computers, in Law; that is, the help that this use provides to the development

and application of Law. In other words, it is about seeing the instrumental aspect

given by Information Technology in Law, thus discovering the techniques and

knowledge for the research and development of knowledge of Information

Technology for the expansion of Law, through legal recovery, as well as the

elaboration of legal linguistic material, analysis instruments, and in general, the

treatment of legal information.

We locate Legal Informatics as the area in which it becomes an instrument aimed

at optimizing the work of legal operators. That is to say, when we detect this area

of relationship, in which information technology operates instrumentally at the

service of Law, we are faced with a relationship similar to that which we can

identify, we insist, from the instrumental point of view, between information

technology and any other science. When we analyse the contribution of Legal

Informatics to the optimisation of the work of legal operators, we are thinking of

different areas of its application, documentary legal informatics, management legal

informatics and finally, a new threshold in its development, which is decisional legal

informatics.

LITERATURE

1. Manual of legal informatics, RICARDO A. GUIBOURG

2. https://archivos.juridicas.unam.mx/www/bjv/libros/8/3875/25.pdf
15

3. http://www.justiciasantafe.gov.ar/ckfinder/userfiles/files/institucional/centro-de-

capacitacion-judicial/3067.pdf

4. http://www.saij.gob.ar/doctrina/daca960114-guibourg-

manual_informatica_juridica_informatica.htm

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