How Digital Technologies are Changing the Practice of Law

Author: 
Year:
Pages:232
ISBN:0-7734-5214-1
978-0-7734-5214-5
Price:$179.95 + shipping
(Click the PayPal button to buy)
This book analyzes the impact the digital revolution has had and will have on the procedure of presenting arguments in a court of law. Developments in communications technology raise questions about the necessity of unique court performances when the judicial process can be played out in a virtual arena. Are the physical sites which have been allocated for judicial practices still relevant and necessary? How will the meaning of virtual judgment be perceived? Will virtual trials be as effective as traditional procedures? Will there still be a need for rhetoric methods, which evolved during ages, in an environment saturated with technology? Will justice become less "real", or will shorter procedures, based on technology, make justice even more visible than ever? This book discusses these questions in a deep and interesting way through the lenses of literature, cinema and popular culture.

Reviews

“Significant changes in communication technology invite significant changes in mind and culture. ... In this volume, Dr. Shulamit Almog turns her sharp diagnostic eye on the effects of that wave ... as it washes over the law. What shall become of law as it makes its way through the storm of digital transformation? ... One thing is certain: when law is but sound and fury truth and justice signify nothing. As the digital condition bears down on us like a storm, “it requires special measures suitable for dealing with it” (190). Our fate lies in our own hands, for we are the tool makers and the tool wielders. We tell our own tale, for bad or for good. With this volume that fate, and perhaps how we might learn to master it, becomes a little clearer, though by no means less fraught and freighted with the consequences of legal poetics and the stories that they avail (or avail not) in the digital age.” - Professor Richard K. Sherwin, New York Law School

“[This book] is an intriguing, flowing work which expertly addresses ancient narratives, legal cases and contemporary postmodern literary theory in order construct a coherent picture of legal poetics in our time.” - Dr. Michal Alberstein, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University

“The book deconstructs the digital experience to its essential components, and argues that it affects our capacity to tell a story and listen to a story, whether a legal story or any other narrative that claims to represent meaning. The study is a fascinating attempt to depict the outcome of the digital revolution on our daily life in a computerized age and in an evolving environment of data overload and emotional paralysis, by examining the space in which law is practiced. In this rich, challenging and provocative text, readers are confidently led through the domains of literature, cinema and architecture, towards the place where they merge with the legal domain.” - Dr. Michael Birnhack, Co-Director, Center of Law & Technology, Haifa University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Foreword - by Richard K. Sherwin
Introduction - Riding on a Storm
Chapter 1. Constructing Legal Meaning in Virtual Environment
Chapter 2. Cyberspace, Narrative and Law
Chapter 3. Seeing Justice in Digital Time
Chapter 4. The Future of Law and Literature
Coda
Bibliography
Index

Other Legal Studies Books