Smart Technologies and the End(s) of Law: Novel Entanglements of Law and Technology
This timely book tells the story of the smart technologies that
reconstruct our world, by provoking their most salient functionality:
the prediction and preemption of our day-to-day activities, preferences,
health and credit risks, criminal intent and spending capacity.Mireille
Hildebrandt claims that we are in transit between an information
society and a data-driven society, which has far reaching consequences
for the world we depend on. She highlights how the pervasive employment
of machine-learning technologies that inform so-called ‘data-driven
agency’ threaten privacy, identity, autonomy, non-discrimination, due
process and the presumption of innocence. The author argues how smart
technologies undermine, reconfigure and overrule the ends of the law in a
constitutional democracy, jeopardizing law as an instrument of justice,
legal certainty and the public good. Nevertheless, the book calls on
lawyers, computer scientists and civil society not to reject smart
technologies, explaining how further engaging these technologies may
help to reinvent the effective protection of the Rule of Law.Academics
and researchers interested in the philosophy of law and technology will
find this book both discerning and relevant. Practitioners and policy
makers in the areas of law, computer science and engineering will
benefit from the insight into smart technologies and their impact today.
