Information & Legitimacy

The Supreme Court of the United States of America is the highest court in the USA and hence the decisions that it lays out are of immense political and social importance.

One way in which the US Supreme Court justifies its decisions is by the use of precedents. It is a legitimizing strategy as current decisions are hence not motivated by political ideologies but rather dictated by a binding prior decision, a precedent. Hence, the Supreme Court is not inventing new law but applying existing case law to a new situation. In this way over time, stability is ensured in the legal system, as it constrains how courts can decide. more >>

Lawrence Lessig is rightly seen as one of the intellectual parents of much of the governance of information discourse. His "law is code" argument is both powerfully simple, and naturally persuasive. The theory on which it rests is built in significant part on a belief in a certain ind of market, and a certain kind of transparency.

This research questions some of Lessig's underlying assumptions - and suggests that this may have consequences for the breadth and generality of his "law is code" concept; the research as published in the 2008 Wisconsin Law Review.