Abstract
The paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the connection of law and legal science, on the one hand, and the Big Data phenomenon, on the other. The connection of Big Data and law can be thematised in several ways. This article makes a distinction whereby there are two levels of interplay between Big Data and the law (and legal science). Big Data on the one hand can be the subject of legal regulation and legal science, but it also can be a tool for better, ‘predictive’ law making and lawyering. This latter is also true for legal science: Big Data opens a whole range of possibilities as a new tool. Thus, this article discusses three fields and questions in three sections: 1. Big Data as the subject of legal regulation. What kind of moral questions does Big Data, and the predictive potential it has, raise? How does law recently frame, define and regulate the Big Data phenomenon? How does Big Data affect existing legal framework rules regarding privacy, data protection, competition, business regulatory, etc.? What will the new rules, regulating Big Data look like? 2. Big Data as a tool in the regulator’s and the lawyer’s hand. How can we exploit the new possibilities provided by Big Data in law making, policy creation and the application of law? How can we design new ways of ‘Big Data-based social engineering’? How can we create predictive tools and inferencing techniques based on Big Data in policing, law enforcement and litigation? Finally in part 3. I discuss the impact of Big Data on legal science. How can Big Data, as a research tool help legal science? How do we use legal data-sets and textual corpuses as BD? How will these ‘super-empirical’ research methods affect legal scholarship? What is the relationship between traditional doctrinal scholarship and the new types of BD-based research? How can we use statistical analysis, natural language processing, content analysis, machine learning, behavioural prediction, etc. in legal science?
Highlights
The phrase ‘Big Data’ was born in the IT sector, and it was first described by IT (e.g. Ahlberg, 2011) and business journals, and later in the seminal book by Mayer-Scönberger and Cukier (Mayer-Scönberger and Cukier, 2013)
This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the connection of law and legal science, on the one hand, and the Big Data (BD) phenomenon, on the other
Does BD herald a new period in history? Or only a new era in the development of the information society? Or is it a new driving force that is changing our society? A new mindset? A set of attitudes? And if it is, what is the scope of this mindset? My definition in this article is a narrow and simple one: I use the term Big Data for the new ways, solutions and methods of producing, collecting, processing and using data, which together, as a driving force, might change the mindset, the attitudes, and all of society, – including the law
Summary
The phrase ‘Big Data’ (hereinafter: BD or BD phenomenon) was born in the IT sector, and it was first described by IT (e.g. Ahlberg, 2011) and business journals (see e.g. Economist, 2010), and later in the seminal book by Mayer-Scönberger and Cukier (Mayer-Scönberger and Cukier, 2013). My definition in this article is a narrow and simple one: I use the term Big Data for the new (technical) ways, solutions and methods of producing, collecting, processing and using data, which together, as a driving force, might change the mindset, the attitudes, and all of society, – including the law. (Data on natural phenomena, such as the data from the Large Hadron Collider or weather data, are sometimes considered to be ‘Big’, but this aspect has no relevance here) It includes a whole range of data from the cell information, location and call (meta)data of mobile phones, the search strings typed into search engines, and click information on websites, as well as the data generated by sensors, smart meters, and online cash machines, or the millions of pages written and published by government officials, known as ‘open data’ (Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, 2013: 116–118). How will these ‘super-empirical’ research methods change legal scholarship? What is the relationship between traditional doctrinal scholarship and the new types of BD-based research? How can we use statistical analysis, natural language processing, content analysis, machine learning, behavioural prediction, etc. in legal science?
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
