Seminar with Professor Pedro Aleixo - Legal Theory and Digitalization

The impacts of digital technologies on the nature of law

Abstract

The ongoing digital revolution offers opportunities to advance legal theory’s analytical endeavor of providing an accurate understanding of law as a social phenomenon. The impacts of digital technologies - whether they bring about change (transformative impacts), open up new possibilities for a more accurate understanding (revelatory impacts), or provide opportunities to look more closely at dimensions of the legal phenomenon that are not always adequately explored (highlighting impacts) - are important not only for law as a social phenomenon, but also for furthering the understanding of the nature of law. The lecture aims to answer the following questions about the impacts of digitalization on the nature of law: (i) Are there - from an analytical perspective - revelatory, transformative or highlighting impacts on the nature of law? (ii) Is it reasonable - from a predictive perspective - to expect revelatory, transformative, or highlighting impacts on the nature of law? When considering the nature of law, legal theory must take into account the typical and not just the necessary properties of law. These properties go far beyond the question of the basic criteria of legal validity, contested between legal positivism and antipositivism. Explanations of the nature of law must also include law’s specific purpose, normativity, coerciveness and legal institutionality. As this lecture aims to reflect on the impacts of digital technologies on the nature of law, the first part clarifies certain assumptions about legal theory and the central features of the nature of law. The second part examines these central features in order to assess the impacts of digital technologies on the nature of law - whether revelatory, transformative or highlighting, and also whether in progress or looming on the horizon. The third part focuses on issues of legal reasoning. Even if legal reasoning in its entirety is not central to the nature of law, it encompasses interpretive reasoning. And depending on how digitalization affects the latter type of reasoning, conclusions can be drawn about the impacts of emerging digital technologies on the nature of law.

Bio

Pedro Scherer de Mello Aleixo - 2004: Law degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Porto Alegre; 2007-11: Research assistant at the Faculty of Law of the University of Augsburg; 2012: Doctorate the Faculty of Law of the University of Augsburg; 2018: Professor at the Federal University of São Paulo (tenured position); 2024-25: Visiting professor at the University of Bielefeld.

Registration

Please register here - no later than Friday December 13, 2024 at 12:00. Please note there is no more than 20 seats available. 

There will be served a lunch plate at the seminar.