Description
Book SynopsisLaw today is incomplete, inaccessible, unclear, underdeveloped, and often perplexing to those whom it affects. In The Legal Singularity, Abdi Aidid and Benjamin Alarie argue that the proliferation of artificial intelligenceenabled technology and specifically the advent of legal prediction is on the verge of radically reconfiguring the law, our institutions, and our society for the better.
Revealing the ways in which our legal institutions underperform and are expensive to administer, the book highlights the negative social consequences associated with our legal status quo. Given the infirmities of the current state of the law and our legal institutions, the silver lining is that there is ample room for improvement. With concerted action, technology can help us to ameliorate the problems of the law and improve our legal institutions. Inspired in part by the concept of the technological singularity, The Legal Singularity presents a future state in which technolo
Table of Contents
1. Introducing the Legal Singularity I. Introduction II. What Is the Legal Singularity? a. The Technological Singularity b. The Economic Singularity c. The Legal Singularity III. Hazards Ahead IV. Our Story and Objectives V. Orienting Ourselves VI. Towards the Legal Singularity 2. The Nature of Legal Information I. Introduction II. The Centrality of Information to Law a. Law before Text b. Prediction and Law’s Information Environment III. Analogue, Digital, Computational a. The Analog Era b. The Digital Era IV. The New Information Environment a. Impact of Digitalization b. Access to Data and Access to Justice c. An Open Source Movement? 3. Computational Law I. Introduction II. Understanding Artificial Intelligence III. Applying AI to the Law: Computational Law a. Should Law Be Computed? b. On “Computational Values” 4. Complete Law I. Introduction II. Incomplete Law and Its Problems a. What Is Incomplete Law? b. In Search of Specificity c. Degradation of Legal Certainty III. How Computation Encourages Completeness IV. Complete, as in No Gaps – Not Complete, as in Done 5. Defending the Legal Singularity from Its Critics I. Introduction II. Is Computational Law Reductionist? a. Pasquale, Hildebrandt, and Law’s Unquantifiable Essence b. Ideology, Social Context, and the Legal Singularity c. The Limits of Techno-Critique III. Does the Legal Singularity Threaten the Rule of Law? 6. Implications for the Judiciary I. Introduction II. The Pitfalls of the Modern Judiciary a. Biases and Human Weaknesses b. Courthouse Overcrowding and Delayed Justice c. The Implications of Court Design III. Computational Solutions in the Courtroom a. Human Experts b. Legal Research c. Document Drafting d. Expert Evidence e. Changes to Fact-Finding Procedures f. Discovery g. Predictive Technology h. Case Management i. Fair Settlements IV. The Paradox of Judging in the Computational Era a. Beyond Physical Courtrooms and Human Judges i. Neural Laces ii. Online Courts and Dispute Resolution iii. Alternative Dispute Resolution V. Possible Roadblocks to Adoption VI. Looking Ahead: The Evolution of the Judiciary 7. Towards Universal Legal Literacy I. Introduction II. The Legal Profession’s Problem State a. Problem I: The Market for Legal Services i. The Unaffordability Problem ii. Consequences of Unaffordability iii. Responses to the Unaffordability Problem by the Legal Profession b. Problem II: Excessive Legal Complexity III. The Solution: Universal Legal Literacy a. Imagining Universal Legal Literacy b. Universal Legal Literacy in the Legal Singularity 8. Implications for Governments I. Introduction II. Governments and Technology III. Artificially Intelligent Governments IV. Current Government Applications of AI V. Applications of AI in Service Provision and Regulation a. Tax Regulation b. Government Benefits Programs c. Immigration VI. Applications of AI in Legislation a. Drafting Legislation b. Normative Contributions and Second-Order Modelling 9. Towards Ethical and Equitable Legal Prediction I. Introduction II. The Problem Framework a. Reflection and Amplification Problems b. Techno-Epistemic Problems 10. Conclusion Afterword Acknowledgments Index
