For a long time, digital justice has represented an epochal and significant change in the operation of the law and in legal practitioners. On closer inspection, in fact, the debate that followed the introduction of new artificial intelligence techniques in the regulatory and jurisdictional context has evoked significant food for thought in relation to various issues. Among these, classic themes for the philosophy of law and legal informatics showed particular importance: the (sometimes mobile) limits between legal reasoning and the discretion of the judiciary, the techniques of legal argumentation and the complexifications deriving from the multiplication of legal systems and the hierarchies that concern them, the relapses on teaching of law techniques. Again, the implications that derive from legal cultures (especially those deriving of legal realism and critical theories of law) that ask us to look at living law instead of positive law as the most capable of representing its evolution, movement, the encounter with the judge to be understood, above all, as human. Now, in the context of what must and can effectively be understood as a “revolution” that crosses not only economic and social relations, but also justice and legal culture, as well as living law and positive law, contributions both from legal and computer sciences are expected. Different approaches looking at theoretical reflection and the applicative dimension, as well as to the meetings and clashes between them in addressing the issue of artificial intelligence as a new tool available to justice, intend to open new paths of critical thinking, as long as they are aware of the need to imagine unprecedented scenarios in relationships, paradoxically, never so complex between “prediction” and “certainty” of law and rights.

Matteo Buffa, University of Milan, Italy
Stefano Montanelli, University of Milan, Italy