Abstract
The present contribution aims to address the ways in which legal philosophy approached and conceptualised the emergence of information technologies between the 1960s and 1970s. We will do that by examining the contributions of four thinkers, coming from different philosophical and ideological backgrounds: Vittorio Frosini, Mario Losano, Luigi Lombardi Vallauri and Renato Borruso. These authors look into the evolution of law and technology from different perspectives that are representative of different approaches to legal theory: the evolutions of idealism (Frosini), analytic philosophy combined with positivism (Losano), anti-positivism in combination with ethical/axiological inquiry (Lombardi Vallauri), as well as the more practical policy-oriented approach of legal practitioners (Borruso).
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Notes
- 1.
The series was issued by the Edizioni di Comunità publishing house, and was named Law and Modern Culture (Diritto e cultura moderna). It was directed by two prominent scholars, legal sociologist Renato Treves (1907–1992) and legal philosopher Uberto Scarpelli (1924–1993).
- 2.
In short, the main features of cybernetics can be described as: (1) the study of information processing in order to understand the goal-oriented behaviour of systems; (2) the application of this method to both physical systems and biological systems; and consequently (3) its application to both animal-human realm and to artificial objects (machines). See Wiener (1948).
- 3.
We can note how this need of protecting and improving is the same drive of religious and philosophical thought.
- 4.
A considerable part of his main book on information technology consists in fact in a detailed description of the existing projects classified by country (Losano 1994, p. 47).
- 5.
The complete title is Giuscibernetica. Macchine e modelli cibernetici nel diritto (Legal Cybernetics. Machines and Models of Cybernetics in the Law), Torino: Einaudi, 1969.
- 6.
Here we can disregard Losano’s distinction between “systematics” and “potential practical activity” (Losano 1994, p. 35–39), which is not needed for our purposes.
- 7.
Loevinger’s quantitative approach reflected the idea of analytical philosophy that reality—and therein the legal domain—can be reduced to language. On the point, Frosini (1968, p. 59) highlighted that the legal phenomenon appears irreducible to the linguistic profile alone, in which it was forced by the methodology of the analytical school, and it may instead find an interpretative formula in the cybernetic models. Frosini noted that cybernetic models are based on schemes of energy transmission, and, in the same way, law is composed of messages, i.e. normative expressions, being essentially a complex of structures of human action in social life, which are symbolized and made communicable by means of a code of signs.
- 8.
The IDG was one of the first institutions dedicated to automatic processing and storage of legal documents (laws, courts’ decisions, administrative regulations, etc.) in Italy. In 2001 it was replaced by the Institute of Theory and Technique of Legal Information (Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica, ITTIG). See www.ittig.cnr.it.
- 9.
Eugen Huber (1849–1923) was a Swiss lawyer, main author of the 1907 Swiss Civil Code. Art. 1 of the Code states this clear-cut principle of interpretation for the judge, which was meant as a “responsible constraint” to make a decision in an unclear situation.
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Contissa, G., Godano, F., Sartor, G. (2021). Computation, Cybernetics and the Law at the Origins of Legal Informatics. In: Chiodo, S., Schiaffonati, V. (eds) Italian Philosophy of Technology. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 35. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54522-2_7
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