As law goes by: topology, ontology, evolution

  • Authors:

  • Ugo Pagallo

  • Affiliations:

  • Law School, University of Torino, Torino, Italy

  • Venue:
  • AICOL-I/IVR-XXIV'09 Proceedings of the 2009 international conference on AI approaches to the complexity of legal systems: complex systems, the semantic web, ontologies, argumentation, and dialogue
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

The paper deals with Hayek's classical distinction between cosmos and taxis, i.e., evolution vs. constructivism, spontaneous orders vs. human (political). planning. Recent empirical evidence confirms that the informational complexity of the law is not reducible to taxis alone and, furthermore, orders spontaneously emerge from the complexity of the environment through specific laws of evolution. Whereas, most of the time, today's research on AI & Law focuses on the taxis-side of the law, my aim is to illustrate the informational nature of complex social systems via a theory of spontaneous orders and an evolutionary theory of complex social networks. By distinguishing three levels of analysis, namely information as reality, for reality, and on reality, a topological approach shows how information is produced and distributed in current legal systems, how it is possible to harness these properties and obtain useful applications in the legal domain, while shedding further light on some aspects of current AI research.