21 December 2020

60 years Erich Schweighofer – International Trends in Legal Informatics

Dear Readers

On February 27, 2020, we had the pleasure of presenting Erich Schweighofer with the Festschrift "International Trends in Legal Informatics" during his "IRIS - International Legal Informatics Symposium" in Salzburg.

Erich Schweighofer is one of the key figures of legal informatics in Europe and worldwide.

The title "International Trends in Legal Informatics" was chosen to honor his rich output as a university lecturer, editor of scholarly anthologies, and, above all, as a scholar and author at the interface of law and informatics.

In good Schweighoferian tradition, both German-language and English-language contributions are combined in the Festschrift. Like the work of Erich Schweighofer, the contributions in this volume show an enormously wide range of content. This ranges from Good Old Fashioned AI and Law, legal information and legal language to the regulation of technology, copyright law, data protection law and international law.

For a fuller appreciation of the honoree here, please see the Preface in this issue. The entire issue/festschrift is freely available here.

I would like to thank Erich Schweighofer, among others, for his many years of faithful support of the journal "Jusletter IT - die Zeitschrift für IT und Recht" as co-editor and, in particular, my colleagues Walter Hötzendorfer and Christoph Tschohl for their great commitment as co-editors of the Festschrift for Erich. What would a "liber amicorum" be without the friends who have invested time and spirit in the appreciation and work of the jubilarian? Many thanks to all of you for your great commitment!
I would like to express my sincere thanks to the publishing team for their prudent and careful supervision of the publications.

Today, we are publishing the Festschrift digitally, but it is also available for purchase as a book. On the book page you will find more information about the book, the jubilarian, the authors and editors.

We are very much looking forward to further exciting years of scientific discourse with Erich Schweighofer - ad multos annos.

For the editors:

Franz Kummer

Preface

Vorwort

Walter Hötzendorfer

Christof Tschohl

Franz Kummer

Articles

Erich Schweighofer – ein Pionier der Rechtsinformatikforschung zur Verantwortungsvollen Digitalisierung

A Min Tjoa

Rechtsinformatik: von der Orchidee zur Magerwiese

Rolf H. Weber

Legal Informatics is a central research topic in legal sciences with increasing importance in academia and practice. The traditional Legal Informatics experienced a relatively slow development after the inception of this interdisciplinary approach; however, the strong technological move of the last 25 years lead to substantially changed and enriched parameters of the legal environment having been materially influenced by Erich Schweighofer and the yearly IRIS symposium.

The Need for Good Old Fashioned AI and Law

Trevor Bench-Capon

«Good Old Fashioned AI and Law» typically involved a partnership between legal expertise and computer knowledge. Nowadays, however, there is a new fashion in AI. Algorithms that learn from large datasets have moved to the centre stage in many domains. In this paper I set out a number of features of the legal domain which mean that we should use the new AI with caution. For systems which support legal decision making and predict case outcomes, there is not yet a real alternative to Good Old Fashioned AI and Law. Machines may be able to teach themselves chess, but not yet law. Department of Computer Science, The University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.

Rechtssprache und Rechtsinformatik im europäischen Mehrebenensystem

Günther Schefbeck

Das Problem des sprachlichen Zugangs zum Recht stellt sich im europäischen Mehrebenensystem, bedingt durch das Erfordernis die nationalen Jurisdiktionen übergreifender rechtssprachlicher Abstraktion und die Herausforderung der Multilingualität, neu. In der Überlagerung europäischer und nationaler Rechtsetzung wirkt die Resultante der rechtssprachlichen Entwicklung mehr divergent als konvergent. Keine Rücksicht nimmt die europäische Rechtssprache auf die Besonderheit plurizentrischer Sprachen, zu zeigen am österreichischen Deutsch. Daraus ergeben sich neue Aufgabenstellungen für die Rechtsinformatik.

Legal Visualisation in the Digital Age: From Textual Law towards Human Digitalities

Vytautas Čyras

Friedrich Lachmayer

The meanings of law form an object of visualisation. As well as the types of legal situations, the pre-textual interdependencies of the legal terms should be made visible. Situations can be governed by legal machines. The research subject of digital humanities is the human, who is surrounded by digitally-based phenomena, whereas that of human digitalities is the machine, which is required to act in conformity with the law. Human digitalities are viewed in the context of the evolution from plants to animals to humans to machines. We see an expansion and transfer of standards: digital standards for humanities and human standards for digitalities.

Legal Information: the Long Path and the Way Home

Ahti Saarenpää

In this article, I will be taking a look at the principles which should be made the foundation of legal information on statutes and its skilled use in the digital environment of the modern constitutional state. The issue goes beyond stating the obvious – that every digital lawyer in this day and age is capable of retrieving legal information in digital form from a digital datastore. There is another dimension too: we must have the expertise required to assess matters in terms of the information processes involved and the path the information will travel in the course of those processes.

Walking from CELEX to EUR-Lex

Pascale Berteloot

The present paper delivers a broad overview of the evolution of the access to European legal acts and documents and legal documentation during the first decade of this century from the perspective of the former head of EUR-Lex. It particularly reminds of the integration of the historical CELEX database into a new database called EUR-Lex which we know to-day. It shortly mentions the challenges of enlargements, transparency and free access to legal documents and shows how the early availability of documents could be implemented.

Technologies, Teaching of Law and a Communicative Theory of Law

Fernando Galindo

The article is structured as follows: It initially considers the change in the orientation of the teaching of jurists, exemplified by the demands of the Bologna process; examines, in a Second section, the limitations of the discussions on Legal Informatics that have taken place in the last thirty years; the next Section discusses the possibilities of undertaking a critical position on a dogmatic juridical approach whose content is exclusively focused on the study of legal texts; the last Section argues that a wide-ranging framework of reflection, debate and support for social needs and competences can result in a communicative theory of Law.

Recht als Praxis

Meinrad Handstanger

The perspective of application of law is of fundamental importance for fixing the content of legal norms. The content of a concrete legal norm is principally determined by its use in the legal context of use. In this context legal truth (or rather legal correctness) is based on the success of arguments. Case law shows discontinuities which cannot be predicted sufficiently with legal tech. In order to support legal decision making and drafting, a phrase-oriented format of legal rules is desirable.

Digitale Werkintegrität: der Europäischen Werkbegriff und der mitgliedstaatliche Schutz vor Werkvernichtung

Clemens Thiele

The article deals with the issue of copyright work and protection of works from the perspective of moral rights. In summary, the European Court of Justice states that two conditions must be met in order to be considered a work of art under Union copyright legislation, namely the criterion of objective identification and the criterion of originality. A mere aesthetic effect is not important. As a result, the field of creative electronic work is extensively protected by European copyright law. The moral component of the work, which remains within the competence of the Member States, must not lead to the integrity of the work being undermined to the extent that any destruction of the work by the material owner must be tolerated. The most recent case law in the Member States is striving for a balance in line with the interests of the parties, which should certainly be taken into account in the interpretation of the Austrian provision on the protection of works under Section 21 of the Austrian Copyright Act (UrhG).

Kriterien zur Beurteilung der Beweiskraft von Daten

Michael Sonntag

In court as well as administrative proceedings digital data is getting more important as evidence, as both private persons and companies can hardly work or be successful without IT equipment and electronic communication. Eletronic documents, E-Mails, and chat messages replace handwritten records or typewritten letters. As all these data are easily modified, several questions occur in disputes: Is the data correct or was it modified? Did it come from the stated sender/author? Does it match reality? This contribution presents several criteria to evaluate and assess the weight of such evidence.

Usage Scenarios for Blockchain Technologies in the Domain of Civil Law Notaries

Hans-Georg Fill

Felix Härer

Blockchain technologies have recently been discussed also in regard to their application in the legal domain. In this paper we take the perspective of civil law notaries as an established and trustful institution and derive two potential usage scenarios for using public permissioned blockchains in this area. Thereby, the specificities of civil law notaries as state-appointed officials who provide independent, impartial and objective advice for important legal transactions need to be considered. The usage scenarios intend to show possible directions for future blockchain applications.

Justiz 3.0

Christian Gesek

Martin Schneider

Martin Hackl

Thomas Gottwald

The use of information technology is changing the processes in the Austrian judicial system already for over 40 years. Looking at the entire legal sector, there are clear parallels in the related evolutionary steps of legal tech. Since 2013 the Federal Ministry of Justice is working in close cooperation with practitioners on the strategic initiative Justiz 3.0, which aims to introduce fully digital workflows and the required IT work stations. This article gives an insight into the status quo of the Digitalization in the judicial system, an outlook on future developments as well as the corresponding strategic considerations.

Wie Ansätze künstlicher Intelligenz die öffentliche Verwaltung und die Justiz verändern könnten

Jörn von Lucke

Jan Etscheid

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers the potential to change the state, administration, judiciary and society in a highly disruptive way. Already today, numerous AI applications are part of everyday products and services. But how can they also be systematically used by the public sector? What are the consequences for the organisation of state and administration as well as society? Many open questions require societal discussions about decision-support systems and autonomous decisions.

Some Core Legal challenges of Digital Transformation

Reinhard Riedl

The digital transformation creates many trends that will eventually reshape large parts of the economy and the society. We discuss the core trends and their consequences. Thereby, we address both industry and government. For each trend, we explain some of the most immediate challenges for legislation. In some areas adaptions of regulations will suffice, while in other areas we need fundamentally new concepts and even paradigm changes.

The man who wasn’t there again – Creative Informatics and Legal AI

Burkhard Schafer

As legal AI becomes a viable competitor for human lawyers, concern about technological unemployment is reaching the legal profession. One response is a re-orientation of the value proposition of legal service industry, focussing less on knowledge and analytical reasoning skills to «soft» skills such as creativity. This however makes two problematic assumptions: that creativity is a positive trait of good legal advice, and that it is indeed both beyond machine intelligence. This paper aims to challenge both assumptions.

Automatisierte Fahrzeuge im Straßenverkehr

Georg Borges

Hochautomatisierte Fahrzeuge sind ein wichtiges und interessantes Beispiel für die Herausforderungen, die sich durch mit künstlicher Intelligenz ausgestattete Systeme für das Recht ergeben: Bei Kraftfahrzeugen handelt es sich um grenzüberschreitend eingesetzte, international vertriebene Produkte, die aufgrund des erheblichen Gefahrenpotentials einer intensiven rechtlichen Regelung unterliegen. Der Beitrag erörtert anhand der Anforderungen an die Zulassung hochautomatisierter Fahrzeuge zum Straßenverkehr die besonderen Herausforderungen, die sich durch künstliche Intelligenz für die Regulierung von Technologie ergeben.

Profiling, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence und Social Media – Gefahren für eine Gesellschaft ohne effektiven Datenschutz

Indra Spiecker genannt Döhmann

The paper discusses the challenges for central principles of data protection by three data processings in three prominent practices: profiling, big data and artificial intelligence as well as social media and plattforms. It analyzes the legal problems and shows to which extend the GDPR regulates these phenomena and where a lack of regulation threatens effective data processing.

The Microsoft Ireland case, the CLOUD Act and the cyberspace sovereignty trilemma

Paul de Hert

Johannes Thumfart

The Microsoft Ireland case has been heard by the Supreme Court in the beginning of 2018 and dropped due to the introduction of the CLOUD Act in May 2018, which has been issued in order to resolve the fundamental problems at the core of this case. This contribution focusses on two key features of this development: the conflicting and often chaotic approaches to the notion of sovereignty of many of the actors involved and the remarkable move of a private company such as Microsoft to trigger regulation at a time, in which companies, technologies, data flows and governments transgress borders, challenging territorial comprehensions of the world order.

Zum Verhältnis von Recht und Technik: Rechtsdurchsetzung durch Technikgestaltung

Walter Hötzendorfer

Eine der vielen verschiedenen Beziehungen zwischen Recht und Technik besteht darin, dass Rechtsdurchsetzung auch durch Technikgestaltung erfolgen kann. Nach Erörterung der Grundlagen dieses Prinzips werden dessen spezifische Ausgestaltung als Privacy by Design und konkrete Normierung in Art. 25 DSGVO näher beleuchtet. Ein Fortschritt in der praktischen Umsetzung von Privacy by Design soll mit der hier postulierten Unterscheidung der sich aus Art. 25 DSGVO ergebenden Anforderungen in konkrete Standardanforderungen und abstrakte Anforderungen erreicht werden. Schließlich wird auch ein besonderer Fokus auf die Bedeutung von Privacy by Architecture gelegt.

Zum Verhältnis von Recht und Technik: Rechtsstaatlichkeit durch Technikgestaltung

Christof Tschohl

Rechtsdurchsetzung durch Technikgestaltung ist, wie im Einleitungsbeitrag von Hötzendorfer dargestellt, eine effektive Methode zur Umsetzung politischer Vorgaben durch Rechtsnormen, welche dazu verpflichten, die Vorgaben in der Technikgestaltung umzusetzen. Staatliche Organe haben bei der Gestaltung technischer Hilfsmittel zur Vollziehung stets das rechtsstaatliche Prinzip zu beachten. Rechtsstaatlichkeit durch Technikgestaltung als modernes Verfassungsprinzip wird aus den Grundrechten abgeleitet und inkludiert vor allem auch die technische Absicherung verfahrensrechtlicher Bestimmungen, die der Rechtsstaatlichkeit und dem Rechtsschutz dienen.

Privacy and Peace

Joseph A. Cannataci

The paper identifies the smartphone as one of the most important privacy-relevant changes since Erich Schweighofer entered the scene in the 1980s. The resultant explosion in user-generated content and transactional data as people access the web non-stop, everywhere, provides fertile ground for online surveillance by state-sponsored actors. As states fight an undeclared war in cyberspace, two new paradoxes emerge. Privacy has become a prime casualty of a cold war currently raging in cyberspace which may actually be preventing hot war with live bullets breaking out in the off-line world.

Ein akademisch-traumatischer Streit um die Rechtsinformatik

Maximilian Herberger

Schriftenverzeichnis

Erich Schweighofer