This book provides insights into how AI is changing legal practice, government processes, and individuals’ access to legal processes, encouraging each of us to consider how technological advances are changing the legal system. While the title "AI and Law" immediately links to such new debates on how to regulate AI, this book takes a different perspective and discusses how the progressive merger between computational methods and legal rules changes the very structure and application of the law itself.
In the book, we uncover how automation, including current developments in the field of AI, change the legal field, breaking away from traditional and normative analysis of the role of law in society. We investigate how is automation changing the legal analysis, legal rulemaking, legal rule extraction, and application of legal rules and how does this impact individuals, policymakers, civil servants, and society at large. We show through many examples that a debate on how automation is changing the law is needed, must revolve around the democratic legitimacy of the automation of legal processes, and be informed by the technical feasibility of specific endeavors.