This ground-breaking and timely book explores how big data, artificial intelligence and algorithms are creating new types of agency, and the impact that this is having on our lives and the rule of law. Addressing the issues in a thoughtful, cross-disciplinary manner, leading scholars in law, philosophy, computer science and politics examine the ways in which data-driven agency is transforming democratic practices and the meaning of individual choice.

This innovative book proposes new theories on how the legal system can be made more comprehensible, usable and empowering for people through the use of design principles. Utilising key case studies and providing real-world examples of legal innovation, the book moves beyond discussion to action. It offers a rich set of examples, demonstrating how various design methods, including information, service, product and policy design, can be leveraged within research and practice.

What does computable law mean for the autonomy, authority, and legitimacy of the legal system? Are we witnessing a shift from Rule of Law to a new Rule of Technology? Should we even build these things in the first place? This unique volume collects original papers by a group of leading international scholars to address some of the fascinating questions raised by the encroachment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into more aspects of legal process, administration, and culture. Weighing near-term benefits against the longer-term, and potentially path-dependent, implications of replacing human legal authority with computational systems, this volume pushes back against the more uncritical accounts of AI in law and the eagerness of scholars, governments, and LegalTech developers, to overlook the more fundamental - and perhaps 'bigger picture' - ramifications of computable law. With contributions by Simon Deakin, Christopher Markou, Mireille Hildebrandt, Roger Brownsword, Sylvie Delacroix, Lyria Bennet Moses, Ryan Abbott, Jennifer Cobbe, Lily Hands, John Morison, Alex Sarch, and Dilan Thampapillai, as well as a foreword from Frank Pasquale.

This Handbook brings together 40 of the world’s leading scholars and rising stars who study international law from disciplines in the humanities – from history to literature, philosophy to the visual arts – to showcase the distinctive contributions that this field has made to the study of international law over the past two decades. Including authors from Australia, Canada, Europe, India, South Africa, the UK and the USA, all the contributors engage the question of what is distinctive, and critical, about the work that has been done and that continues to be done in the field of ‘international law and the humanities’. For many of these authors, answering this question involves reflecting on the work they themselves have been contributing to this path-breaking field since its inception at the end of the twentieth century. For others, it involves offering models of the new work they are carrying out, or else reflecting on the future directions of a field that has now taken its place as one of the most important sites for the study of international legal practice and theory. Each of the book’s six parts foregrounds a different element, or cluster of elements, of international law and the humanities, from an attention to the office, conduct and training of the jurist and jurisprudent (Part 1); to scholarly craft and technique (Part 2); to questions of authority and responsibility (Part 3); history and historiography (Part 4); plurality and community (Part 5); as well as the challenge of thinking, and rethinking, international legal concepts for our times (Part 6). Outlining new ways of imagining, and doing, international law at a moment in time when original, critical thought and practice is more necessary than ever, this Handbook will be essential for scholars, students and practitioners in international law, international relations, as well as in law and the humanities more generally.

Exploring power and participation in a connected world. Social media are all around us. For many, they are the first things to look at upon waking and the last thing to do before sleeping. Integrated seamlessly into our private and public lives, they entertain, inform, connect (and sometimes disconnect) us. They’re more than just social though. In addition to our experiences as everyday users, understanding social media also means asking questions about our society, our culture and our economy. What we find is dense connections between platform infrastructures and our experience of the social, shaped by power, shifting patterns of participation, and a widening ideology of connection. This book introduces and examines the full scope of social media. From the social to the technological, from the everyday to platform industries, from the personal to the political. It brings together the key concepts, theories and research necessary for making sense of the meanings and consequences of social media, both hopefully and critically. Dr Zoetanya Sujon is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Director for Communications and Media at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

This collection examines the social and cultural legacy of Thatcherism in the 21st century. Drawing upon perspectives from a range of disciplines, it considers how Thatcherism manifests itself today and how we can assess its long-term impact. The book is divided into four sections, which offer different ways of conceptualising and addressing questions of legacy: the ideological impact of Thatcherism on the Conservative Party and on the country; the long-term impact of Thatcherism across different parts of the UK; how Thatcherism has altered social attitudes to everything from welfare spending to Europe; and how popular historical accounts of Thatcherism have become embedded in different parts of contemporary British culture. The essays in this volume draw upon newly available archival materials, oral histories, social attitudes surveys and parliamentary debates to provide a well-rounded perspective on Thatcherism today.

This book proposes three liability regimes to combat the wide responsibility gaps caused by AI systems – vicarious liability for autonomous software agents (actants); enterprise liability for inseparable human-AI interactions (hybrids); and collective fund liability for interconnected AI systems (crowds). Based on information technology studies, the book first develops a threefold typology that distinguishes individual, hybrid and collective machine behaviour. A subsequent social science analysis specifies the socio-digital institutions related to this threefold typology. Then it determines the social risks that emerge when algorithms operate within these institutions. Actants raise the risk of digital autonomy, hybrids the risk of double contingency in human-algorithm encounters, crowds the risk of opaque interconnections. The book demonstrates that the law needs to respond to these specific risks, by recognising personified algorithms as vicarious agents, human-machine associations as collective enterprises, and interconnected systems as risk pools – and by developing corresponding liability rules. The book relies on a unique combination of information technology studies, sociological institution and risk analysis, and comparative law. This approach uncovers recursive relations between types of machine behaviour, emergent socio-digital institutions, their concomitant risks, legal conditions of liability rules, and ascription of legal status to the algorithms involved.