Multisensory Law and Legal Informatics – A Comparison of How these Legal Disciplines Relate to Visual Law

Colette R. Brunschwig
Colette R. Brunschwig
Field of law:

Multisensory Law

Collection:

Festschrift Erich Schweighofer

This paper discusses how multisensory law and legal informatics deal with the flood of legal information and the complexity of law. Failing a comparison to date how these legal disciplines relate to visual law, and how they attempt to provide lawyers or laypersons with adequate coping strategies, this paper aims to contribute to filling this research gap. It draws on insights from various disciplines, such as legal informatics, legal theory, multisensory law, and so forth. Key findings include that there is a similarity between multisensory law and legal informatics regarding the general function of their visual products. Given this finding, this paper provides a first systematic knowledge basis for multisensory law and particularly for its relationship to visual law. It builds specific systematic knowledge about the subject matter and cognitive interest of multisensory law and its branch «visual law.» It contributes to the current understanding of legal informatics and clarifies how legal informatics and visual law are related. What are the implications of the findings presented here? They challenge the (still) prevailing verbocentric legal paradigm by advocating a shift toward a multisensory legal paradigm. The new paradigm does not refute well-founded and indispensable verbal legal communication. Rather, it stands for blending established with multisensory modes of legal communication. In terms of the sociology of science, such a paradigm shift would imply that the growing number of uni- and multisensory legal phenomena would gain the necessary scientific attention. Particularly as visual, audiovisual, and tactile-kinesthetic legal phenomena are gaining increasing significance in the legal context, it is simply not possible to think them away from jurisprudence (Rechtswissenschaft) and legal practice. Without intending to diminish the lasting significance of legal informatics for ICT-based uni- and multisensory legal phenomena, this paper suggests subsuming all the uni- and multisensory legal phenomena under multisensory law, whether they are ICT-based or not. This – highly debatable – suggestion is based on the observation that the established disciplines of the applicable law and the basic legal disciplines fail to adequately explore the legal or legally relevant phenomena at stake, at least as regards certain subject areas of multisensory law (the law as a uni- and multisensory phenomenon in the law and the law as a uni- and multisensory phenomenon).

Table of contents

  • 1. Introduction – The Crisis in Verbocentric Legal Communication
    • 1.1. Common Issues of Multisensory Law and Legal Informatics
      • 1.1.1. The Flood of Verbal Legal Information
      • 1.1.2. The Complexity of Verbal Law
      • 1.1.3. Structuring the Law
    • 1.2. The Recipients' Difficulties and a Research Gap
    • 1.3. Questions, Methods, and Purpose
  • 2. Multisensory Law and Visual Law
    • 2.1. Multisensory Law
      • 2.1.1. The Term «Multisensory Law»
        • 2.1.1.1. «Multisensory»
        • 2.1.1.2. «Law»
          • 2.1.1.2.1. «Law»: A First Definition
          • 2.1.1.2.2. «Law»: A Second Definition
        • 2.1.1.3. «Multisensory Law» 
      • 2.1.2. Multisensory Law and its Subject Matter 
        • 2.1.2.1. The Uni- and Multisensory Phenomena in the Law
        • 2.1.2.2. The Law as a Uni- and Multisensory Phenomenon in the Law
        • 2.1.2.3. The Law as a Uni- and Multisensory Phenomenon
      • 2.1.3. The Cognitive Interest of Multisensory Law 
        • 2.1.3.1. The Cognitive Interest of the Uni- and Multisensory Phenomena in the Law
        • 2.1.3.2. The Cognitive Interest of the Law as a Uni- and Multisensory Phenomenon in the Law
        • 2.1.3.3. The Cognitive Interest of the Law as a Uni- and Multisensory Phenomenon
      • 2.1.4. Multisensory Law – a New Legal Discipline? 
        • 2.1.4.1. Preliminary Remarks and Working Hypothesis
        • 2.1.4.2. Multisensory Law as a Branch of Law?
        • 2.1.4.3. Multisensory Law as a New Discipline in the Making (intra muros jurisprudentiae)
    • 2.2. Visual Law 
      • 2.2.1. «Visual Law»
        • 2.2.1.1. «Visual»
        • 2.2.1.2. «Visual Law»
      • 2.2.2. The Subject Matter of Visual Law 
        • 2.2.2.1. The Visual Phenomena in the Law
        • 2.2.2.2. The Law as a Visual Phenomenon in the Law
        • 2.2.2.3. The Law as a Visual Phenomenon
      • 2.2.3. The Cognitive Interest of Visual Law 
        • 2.2.3.1. The Cognitive Interest of the Visual Phenomena in the Law
        • 2.2.3.2. The Cognitive Interest of the Law as a Visual Phenomenon in the Law
        • 2.2.3.3. The Cognitive Interest of the Law as a Visual Phenomenon
      • 2.2.4. Visual Law as a Branch of Multisensory Law 
  • 3. Legal Informatics and Visual Legal Knowledge Representation
    • 3.1. Legal Informatics
      • 3.1.1. The Subject Matter of Legal Informatics
      • 3.1.2. The Cognitive Interest of Legal Informatics
        • 3.1.2.1. The Cognitive Interest of the ICT-based Phenomena in the Law
        • 3.1.2.2. The Cognitive Interest of the Law as an ICT-based Phenomenon in the Law
        • 3.1.2.3. The Cognitive Interest of the Law as an ICT-based Phenomenon
      • 3.1.3. Legal Informatics as a Legal Discipline 
    • 3.2. Visual Legal Knowledge Representation 
      • 3.2.1. On Legal Knowledge Representation in General
        • 3.2.1.1. Legal Knowledge Representation – An Area within «Artificial Intelligence and Law»
        • 3.2.1.2. What is a Legal Knowledge Representation?
        • 3.2.1.3. Types of Legal Knowledge Representation
      • 3.2.2. On Visual Legal Knowledge Representation in Particular 
  • 4. A Comparative Analysis of Multisensory Law andLegal Informatics
    • 4.1. How to Compare Multisensory Law and Legal Informatics?
      • 4.1.1. How to Conduct a Comparative Analysis
      • 4.1.2. How to Conduct the Present Comparative Analysis
    • 4.2. How do Multisensory Law and Legal Informatics Relate to Visual Law? 
      • 4.2.1. First Preliminary Answer
      • 4.2.2. Second Preliminary Answer
  • 5. Findings, Conclusions, and a Janus View
    • 5.1. Findings
    • 5.2. Conclusions – What Do these Findings Mean?
    • 5.3. A Janus View
  • 6. References
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