La Trobe

Reflections on my journey in using Information Technology to support Legal Decision Making—from Legal Positivism to Legal Realism

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posted on 2021-02-11, 05:16 authored by John ZeleznikowJohn Zeleznikow
In this paper I discuss my transition from legal positivism to legal realism and how this has impacted upon my construction of legal decision support systems. As a child living with parents who were heavily engaged in politics, and who had disastrous experiences with the twin evils of fascism and communism, I was encouraged to become a scientist. But my interest was always in law and politics. Constructing legal decision support systems was a pragmatic balance between my skills and interests. So I began constructing rule-based systems. But gradually I became aware of the discretionary nature of legal decision making and the need to model legal realism. Through the use of machine learning I have been able to develop useful systems modelling discretion. The advent of the world wide web has allowed the wider community to become more aware of legal decision making. It has fostered the concept of online dispute resolution and provided tools for self-represented litigants. Most importantly, we have become aware that the major impediment to the use of technology in law is not the lack of adequate software. Rather it is the failure of the legal profession to address user centric issues.

History

Publication Date

2019-09-25

Journal

Law in Context. A Socio-legal Journal

Volume

36

Issue

1

Pagination

13p. (p. 80-92)

Publisher

La Trobe University

ISSN

0811-5796

Rights Statement

The Author reserves all moral rights over the deposited text and must be credited if any re-use occurs. Documents deposited in OPAL are the Open Access versions of outputs published elsewhere. Changes resulting from the publishing process may therefore not be reflected in this document. The final published version may be obtained via the publisher’s DOI. Please note that additional copyright and access restrictions may apply to the published version.

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