Jusletter IT

In the general classification of sciences, law is ordinarily considered one of the social sciences. This comes as a surprise to many practitioners. We are used to thinking that our discipline is somehow distinctive – a science that studies justice. What we know as ordinary legal doctrine, our guide to interpreting the law, has little or no interest in society or its development.
In the Network Society, we will inevitably see more regulation on the relationship between law and technology – even though our ambition is to produce technologically neutral laws. Having more regulation on the books will heighten the role of ordinary legal doctrine. At the same time this development should alert us to the increasing importance of legal informatics as a modern social science. Data protection is a premier example of this status. We simply cannot afford to overlook its links to human and fundamental rights in the constitutional state.
I put forward the argument that today general legal science is a more important social science than ever before and that it will play an increasingly crucial role in how we interpret the law day in and day out.