Content uploaded by Václav Janeček
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Václav Janeček on Jul 12, 2019
Content may be subject to copyright.
Personalised Dissemination
of Legal Information
Václav JANE ˇ
CEK 1
Faculty of Law, University of Oxford; St. Edmund Hall, Oxford (UK)
Abstract. A proper functioning of any legal system requires people to know
the law. Our knowledge of the law, however, depends on how legal information
are communicated. Currently, however legal information are communicated rather
poorly. We are still missing opportunities that Big Data and algorithms offer in re-
lation to how the law is published, disseminated, and accessed. This Chapter fo-
cuses on dissemination of legal information. It argues that we should strive for per-
sonalised dissemination. By highlighting and analysing examples from the history
of legal publication, it argues that the shift to personalised dissemination of legal
information does not pose a threat to the existing legal systems. Instead, it could
enhance the overall efficiency and sustainability of our legal communication, in-
crease our knowledge of the law, while reducing the total costs. The Chapter there-
fore makes a case for a new era in publication and communication of the law – the
era of personalised dissemination of legal information.
Keywords. legal information, digitalised legal information, digital law, personal-
isation, dissemination, communication, legal sources, prehistory, history, hyper-
history, access, printing press, internet, big data analytics
1. Introduction
Modern digital societies are drowning in data that they cannot communicate. The on-
line world is replete with data that are freely accessible, but it is increasingly difficult
to retrieve the relevant information from those big datasets. Communication is not only
about data transmissions, but also about information production and retrieval. Communi-
cation is about exchange of information. Access to data and dissemination of data, must
therefore be not confused for access to information and dissemination of information.
Big Data and new analytic algorithms allow us to record, transmit, and newly also
process and communicate information. The advertising business has already understood
this, as we can witness everyday when we go online and are subject to targeted adver-
tising. It may be true that thanks to new information and communication technologies
(ICTs), the swamp of data is getting deeper and deeper, but it is also true that these ICTs
are designed so as to not let us drown. ICTs and Big Data combined give us the ability
to communicate data more efficiently and not get lost completely.
This includes communication of digitalised legal information. Knowledge of the law
in the age of Big Data seems to be withering away precisely because laws are growing
1This Chapter builds partly on the Author’s previous research [1].
Knowledge of the Law in the Big Data Age
G. Peruginelli and S. Faro (Eds.)
© 2019 The authors and IOS Press.
This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0).
doi:10.3233/FAIA190011
91
into a big mass of legal data that we cannot communicate. We are sinking in digitalised
legal information regardless that we often have free access to data about the law. We are
failing at communicating legal information even though legal information are generally
much more important than the omnipresent online commercials. Legal professionals may
have some ICTs tools to access legal data and retrieve relevant legal information, but the
producers of those legal information do not pay much attention to dissemination of any
digitalised legal information. In other words, the law-makers struggle to disseminate the
law.
The current situation is unhappy because people are expected to know the law and
obey it although they cannot efficiently access the relevant legal information and al-
though the law-makers do not bother to communicate the relevant legal information to
them. On this front, Big Data and machine learning promises to be a game changer. It
promises to facilitate a more efficient and sustainable communication of legal informa-
tion, particularly as regards its dissemination. We live in a world where you often cannot
find the relevant legal information, but where the digitalised legal information could find
you. Why, then, do we not yet disseminate legal information in such a personalised man-
ner? Why the law-makers do not communicate the relevant information directly to the
addressees of those information, i.e. more efficiently? The standard objection is that we
should not try fix things that are not broken, and the current system is not (yet) broken.
The fact that we are not yet drowned does not mean that we should not challenge
the current model of publication and dissemination of legal information, provided that its
functioning is not designed to prevent us from drowning eventually. My original claim
in this Chapter is that there is a case for starting a new era of dissemination of legal
information-personalised dissemination of legal information. I propose this solution as a
variant that is both feasible and desirable.
The argument unfolds as follows. Section 2 highlights the challenges posed by the
growing body of legal data. Section 3 shows why the way in which we have been ad-
dressing this challenge so far is and probably will remain unsuccessful. This suggest
we should consider unlocking the hidden opportunities presented by new ICTs and Big
Data. Section 4 argues we need not be worried to innovate the present models of publica-
tion and dissemination of legal information, because we have done it many times before.
The history teaches us that revolutionary technologies regularly spur new model of legal
publication and that they help increasing efficiency and sustainability of legal communi-
cation. Section 5 then discusses some of the apparent costs and benefits of the proposed
innovation to conclude that the benefits are likely to outweigh the costs. In a long run,
personalised dissemination of legal information therefore seems to be a promising way
to make use of algorithms and Big Data as a force for good.
2. The Challenges Posed by the Growing Body of Legal Data
Do you know how many new legal acts or regulations could have applied to you since
last year? If you lived in the European Union (EU) in 2018, it would be up to 92 entirely
new directly applicable regulations and up to another 132 amendments to the already
existing EU law in force2. This means that roughly three new regulations were enacted
every five days last year. Suffice to add that apart from regulations there are many other
2EUR-Lex. Legal Acts – Statistics (by type), 2019, https://perma.cc/2KUD-UG29.
V. Janeˇcek / Personalised Dissemination of Legal Information92
types of legal sources that contain enforceable laws. Now, although these EU laws are
freely available via the EUR-Lex online search engine, one has significant doubts about
the size of the group out of the EU28’s 511.8 million total population3that has even the
slightest idea about what these regulations regulate. As a lawyer myself, for instance, I
know only a fraction of them.
A simple question arises then as to how all the addressees of the EU regulations can
comply with such laws if they do not know their content, let alone that those regulations
exist. The growing body of legal data presents a significant challenge to our knowledge
of the law. The more legal data we produce, the bigger the challenge. The paradox of
digitisation in law then is that the more we try to digitise legal data and employ technolo-
gies to enhance access to law and justice, the more legal data we produce and efficiently
complicate access to law and justice. Big legal data and our ability to obtain relevant
legal information from them is one of the pressing issues of the digital societies.
Two obvious ways to meet the challenge are that people will either resign on ever
acquiring the relevant legal knowledge or that they will pay massive amounts of money
to legal specialists who will communicate the relevant knowledge to them. The first route
casts doubts on the role of legal system and we will not discuss this variant. The second
setting is, however, also unhappy. It is inefficient and unsustainable because members
of society are pushed towards desirable behaviour by lawyers holding an imaginary car-
rot and stick, instead of them being sustainably educated and informed by relevant le-
gal rules and standards (i.e. legal information). The EU regulations are only rarely dis-
cussed publicly – such as in the recent case of the General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR)4– and our society at large thus remains legally incompetent, oblivious or even
misinformed. This clearly shows a problem with the current model of publication and
dissemination of legal information.
3. The Hidden Opportunities of Big Data and Algorithms
The way in which we have addressed the problem so far is insufficient and is lagging
behind the opportunities that algorithms and Big Data offer. Take, for instance, the over-
whelmingly static model of dissemination of EU legal rules. Those rules are produced in
the EU legislative bodies and published in a static journal that is freely available online
via the EUR-Lex search engine: the e-OJ (electronic Official Journal of the European
Union). The EU citizens who have Internet access and have sufficient personal incentives
to learn some legal information can do so freely, provided that they will access actively
the static publication platform and provided that they will be able to perform a relatively
qualified search task. Alternatively, they can set up an alert system that will feed them
with information about every new EU legal document.
In the present model, citizens have free access to legal information, but given the
natural human laziness, it seems unlikely that ordinary people, i.e. non-specialists, would
be actively searching for legal information in their free time or during their work. Instead,
they would be most likely concerned with legal information only when they encounter
3Eurostat. Population on 1 January 2018, https://perma.cc/NN7P-F4CS.
4Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection
of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and
repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation), OJ L 119/1, 4.5.2016.
V. Janeˇcek / Personalised Dissemination of Legal Information 93
some legal issue (usually presented to them as a legal issue by someone else). At that
point, however, the legal issue would probably be so complicated that the non-specialist
would still not be able to find the relevant information herself, regardless that her access
to law is technically free.
The current system of communication of digitalised legal information is thus clearly
underperforming. While access to digitised law is often free, access to legal information
(let alone relevant legal information) is expensive. The issue is that non-specialist cannot
efficiently access legal information themselves. People may know where they can find
the laws and legal data, but they do not know where to look and how to interpret what
they see. This seems partly caused by the growing body of freely accessible legal data,
partly by the lack of expertise, and partly by the privatised use of expert legal systems by
legal professionals. Let us discuss the latest element—the expert systems used by legal
professionals.
Legal professionals are increasingly more reliant on new technologies that help them
to find the relevant legal data and sometimes event to process the relevant legal informa-
tion. In the modern era, the ICTs help legal professionals not only to record and transmit
legal data, but also to process those data and retrieve legal information from them. These
various ‘legal information systems’ (see, e.g., [2]; [3]) facilitate easier access to law and
legal information by providing automated intelligent search engines, assistive predictions
about legal information, and computing power that vastly outperforms humans, both spe-
cialists and non-specialists. The problem is that while investments in such technologies
might be useful for legal professionals, they do not enhance the knowledge of the law
by non-specialists. In fact, the increased use of ICTs by legal professionals might lead
to gradual propertisation and privatisation of legal knowledge by those experts, because
they could eventually represent a limited group of people who can efficiently access le-
gal information. Accordingly, this development would increase the costs barrier when it
comes to access to legal information by non-specialists.
Besides, even if we allowed everyone freely to use the expert legal systems to obtain
the relevant information and if we built completely free information and AI-based advi-
sory systems5[4], this will not address the issue of human laziness. It seem more likely
to believe that people would have better knowledge of the law if it was communicated to
them not only during legal disputes or via elementary social and educational standards.
For the law to serve as an efficient tool to organise society, we should seek actually to
increase everyone’s knowledge of the law more actively.
In the light of this objective, the hidden opportunities presented by Big Data and
analytic algorithms rest, in my view, on the other end of the communication channel. The
true challenge is not how we enhance access to legal information, but how we enhance
dissemination of legal information. The law-makers should start thinking anew about
how to employ new technologies in order to communicate the law’s content actively.
Today’s ICTs allow us to process legal data and legal information in a way that was
not only impossible, but also unthinkable a decade ago, and it would thus be a missed
opportunity if we only focused on how new technologies can help access the law and
legal information.
There are, of course, other ways how to innovate the current model of publication of
law [1]. For example, Big Data and new ICTs open up possibilities to personalise the law,
5See Free Access to Law Movement, http://www.fatlm.org/; World Legal Information Institute, http://www.
worldlii.org/; Legal Information Management Journal.
V. Janeˇcek / Personalised Dissemination of Legal Information94
i.e. to create a specific legal rule applicable to a specific person in a specific situation (e.g.
[5]; [6]; [7]; [8]). Such bespoke tailoring of law could be a step forward, but the recent
Cambridge Analytica scandal gave us a clear lesson that personalised dissemination of
information (the so-called micro-targeting) can be an even more powerful tool because
it facilitates efficient communication [9]. My proposition how to meet the challenge is
therefore simple. I suggest that the future models of publication of law seek to employ
Big Data and new ICTs to personalise dissemination of legal information.
4. The Times They Are a-Changin’
Although the suggested change might seem revolutionary, the history teaches us other-
wise. If we look at the history of legal publication models, it seems that new ICTs have
often spurred radical changes to how we public, access, and disseminate the law. Let me
demonstrate this on some paradigmatic models of publication of legal information. We
will see that the progress regarding publication models was often driven by efficiency
and sustainability considerations and, therefore, that there is a good reason to adopt per-
sonalised dissemination of legal information, provided that such dissemination would
increase the overall efficiency and sustainability of how the law is communicated.
The pre-historical era can be our starting point. Since long before people started
recording legal information in writing, they used symbolic gestures and pronounced
solemn words upon legally important transactions such as when concluding a contract,
entering a marriage, etc. in order to mark the importance of the moment and to create
at least an impression of the existing legal bond ([10], ch. 3). In such context, it was
the witnesses in front of whom these gestures were performed and who thus testified the
existence of such legal bond. In this sense, we can say that the witnesses acted as human
recorders of relevant legal information, which made it slightly problematic in an envi-
ronment where people could die easily and where life expectancy was very low. Legal
information was thus only a short-term type of information and, on the top of it, it was
not very transparent. Similarly, any superior societal authority, i.e. a powerful leader of a
social group, who wanted to broadcast his or her own legal information could only rely
on this inefficient model. So, for example, when someone got authoritatively punished
for trespassing other’s assets (e.g. for killing or stealing his life stock), the information
about impermissibility of such trespass was only disseminated through stories and vivid
experiences of those involved in the execution of the (usually very harsh and painful)
physical punishment.
In the context of such unwritten, short-term, and highly volatile system of recording,
transmitting and processing of legal information, the rise and implementation of writing
as a new technique presented an immense progress. Hence, written records of legal rules
and legal information were soon demanded as the new standard. In fact, “a few jurists
have believed that paragraphs from the Code of Hammurabi express the obligation im-
posed by the king to fix in written form contracts (relating to marriage, herding, or ten-
ant farming), or risk having them invalidated” ([10], p. 48). Not only did the invention
of writing enable long-lasting access to legal information – e.g. by using clay tablets to
record debts, transfers, and property claims in Old Babylonian kingdom ([10], p. 49) –
but it also facilitated a more structured and centralised model of publication of legal in-
formation. The king could publish all the relevant legal information by a uniform method
V. Janeˇcek / Personalised Dissemination of Legal Information 95
that was in principle independent of the mortal human ‘recorders’ and ‘interpreters’. One
such method to which I will turn below was to set legal rules in stone pillars that were
erected in public places.
The dividing line between prehistory and history was never crystal clear because
prehistory and history, “prelaw and law, or world of rite and oath on one hand, world of
writing on the other” ([10], p. 51) existed in parallel. These two eras were thus inextri-
cably mixed, as for example Babylonian laws from the 20th to 17th century BC demon-
strate ([10], p. 51). Accordingly, to speak of a prehistorical model of publication of le-
gal information, we need to focus on its ahistorical features. For the purposes of this
Chapter, therefore, the prehistorical model could be best described as a model of shared
life experience, a model that could only accommodate and disseminate small amounts
of legal information to a small number of people in a limited geographical area and for
a short period of time. As such, the prehistorical model was generally inefficient and
unsustainable, especially if we take a maturing society ruled by law as our benchmark.
The historical era provides many interesting examples. Some of the oldest written
statues, and therefore evidence of some of the oldest historical models of publication of
legal information are the famous Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (1754 BC) and Sume-
rian Code of Ur-Nammu (c. 2100–2050 BC). The Sumerian legal text is still considered
the oldest surviving code on the planet ([11], ch. 7). What is typical of these codes is that
they were carved into persistent materials such as stone and were stored and displayed
at prominent places in the kingdom so that every subject to the king could come and
see the binding law (i.e. key legal information) himself or herself. Practically the same
model using physically immovable or only hardly moveable materials as a recorder of
legal information was used in the Law of Twelve Desks (Leges Duodecim Tabularum)in
the early Roman Republic (449 BC). Efficiency of this model was based on the fact that
people went to public places where these laws were permanently displayed and where
everyone could thus learn them. In comparison with the prelaw period, historical legal
information could have been more easily preserved over generations and in principle,
everyone could have gotten familiar with them. This did not apply only to authoritative
rules but also to rules laid down in written contracts.
Still in the historical era, the advancements of ICTs – for instance the invention
and implementation of transportable information carriers such as papyrus, parchment,
or paper – made it easier to transform the static model of displayed information into a
model where the promulgated laws could have been copied (rewritten) and disseminated
across the territory in which they were supposed to be binding. Gradually, handwriting
on lighter carriers became more widespread and made it possible to disseminate legal
information widely. This could be seen as an advantage but also as a problem because
legal information was communicated and disseminated rather chaotically, without a clear
publication blueprint. The model was becoming less centralised and although common
laws could have been transferred from one place to another simply by transporting the
relevant legal document, the local laws could have evolved and often also did evolve in
substantially different ways.
One way of dealing with this piecemeal publication model was to collect existing
historical laws as they developed locally and provide a comprehensive overview of them.
This was, for example, the case of Corpus Iuris Civilis which was compiled in the 6th
century AD subject to order by Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I, and was then dis-
tributed across the Empire as authoritative evidence of existing laws. We can interpret
V. Janeˇcek / Personalised Dissemination of Legal Information96
this initiative as an attempt to re-gain control over legal information in the Emperor’s
territory, and also to monopolise the publication of such information by identifying an
authoritative source of that information.
Another interesting model appeared in medieval England, shortly before one such
formal source of legal information called Magna Carta Libertatum (1215 AD) was agreed
to by King John of England. The English model addressed the problem of decentralisa-
tion not by collecting and redistributing common (yet locally distinct) laws, but by im-
plementing a specific system of justice. The efficient dissemination of legal information
was facilitated by travelling ‘itinerant’ judges who dispersed justice according to com-
mon laws by going from town to town and hearing disputes of individuals. Paradigmat-
ically, the model thus no longer required the royal subjects to travel to London to find
out what the law was. The laws (figuratively speaking) travelled with the judges to the
king’s subordinates. In a sense, this model was very similar to the one of Eastern Roman
Empire, except that it was not an a priori written collection of rules, but an a posteriori
deciding judge who travelled around the country.
Even though it was the official authorities who were responsible for the ‘travels’ of
legal information via the court system and therefore could have maintained control over
information dissemination, this model was bound to fail at keeping all published common
laws comprehensible. This failure was due to both the increasing amount of judgments,
as well as the practical a posteriori orientation of the publication model which was not
focused on gathering comprehensive information about the common law system, but
mainly on applying and disseminating particular legal information as widely as possible.
No one could have, at the time, followed the work of every single judge across England,
and therefore no one could have known how the common law was evolving. In practice,
thus, there was a shortage of access to the increasing body of common law. A provisional
solution to this problem was then similar to the model of the Eastern Roman Empire:
Sir William Blackstone (18th century AD) collected the existing laws and gathered them
into systematically structured volumes entitled Commentaries on the Laws of England.
These volumes cleared the way for more principled and comprehensive recording and
transmitting of laws. The missing a priori piece in the existing a posteriori English
publication model was thus found.
In the days of Blackstone, one very efficient form of ICT was already in place: the
printing press. Historical estimates show that the overall “European book production
increased enormously [thanks to advancements in printing technologies] from somewhat
more than 12,000 manuscripts per century (or 120 per year) from 500 to 700, to more
than one billion books published during the eighteenth century (the peak year in the
period 500-1799 is 1790, when more than 20 million copies were printed)” ([12], p. 417).
This made it possible to think anew about how to record and publicise legal infor-
mation, even though books and printed manuscripts were still regarded as luxury goods
([12], p. 440). The potential for developing a new publication model must have been
obvious to anyone in the business of publishing.
The development of legal information and its publication models could have taken
multiple routes, but a historical coincidence had it that, at the onset of the 19th century,
Europe witnessed an important codification movement resulting in the Code civil des
Français (Code Napoléon), the Austrian Allgemeines bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (ABGB),
etc. The preceding advancements in printing and overall increased literacy in Europe
([13], ch. 4) then supported the idea that laws could be written down in a compact form
V. Janeˇcek / Personalised Dissemination of Legal Information 97
– a codification – to be distributed and read widely, much like the Bible. And although
positive laws, unlike the Bible, proved to be constantly changing, this historical period
made a significant step towards a uniform top-down model of printed publication which
was very efficient and which still underpins many of the recent models. The newly gained
advantage was that if there were any amendments to the original legal text, the legislator
could have only issued the amendment and the addressee could then physically attach
this amending piece of information to the designated page in his or her own copy of the
codification. Such model allowed for an unprecedentedly wide and efficient dissemina-
tion of legal information. The model was, on the face of it, also sustainable.
However, at the same time when the historical publication model started adhering
to the idea of codifications, printing was still a low scale business. For instance, the
Czech translation of the ABGB from 1812 was never printed in sufficient numbers so
that Czech citizens could learn the civil code (ABGB) properly. Evidence suggests that
printed translations of the ABGB were scarce and their copies quickly sold out ([14], p.
52).
This was a problem only until mid-19th century, though, when a much more produc-
tive rotary printing press appeared. The rotary printing press made things easier but, at
the same time, it spurred new troubles. On the one hand, the rotary printing technology
in combination with the rise of industrial revolution steeply increased the capacity of
printing houses in comparison with those using the outdated flat printing technology. As
a result, legislators could now deliver printed legal information to virtually everyone in
a relatively short time. The scarcity of printed legal information was no longer an issue.
On the other hand, the invention of rotary printing press appeared too late to affect the
already existing codification-based as well as printing-press-reliant publication model. It
only changed one aspect of this model, namely the method or technology of publication.
One small step for publishers, but one giant leap for legislators. That is how we can
describe the change that took place in the second half of the 19th century. The new rotary
printing technology, this relatively small advancement of publishers’ capacity success-
fully defeated one important presumption that was present in every legislator’s publica-
tion model until then. The axiomatic presumption was that laws cannot be changed in-
stantly because communication technologies would not allow for efficient publication of
such changes. Towards the end of 19th century, however, this axiom was no longer valid.
The development of ICTs (i.e. rotary printing technology) removed factual constraints
on how frequently legislative changes and new rules can be made and, as we know from
history, our law-making authorities took full advantage of this shift. This was the giant
leap for legislators. After this change, new rules and amendments are produced like never
before, the rule-making increases and leads to what we may now call a hyperhistorical
model of publication of legal information [15]. In the upcoming models we must rely
on ICTs not only to record and transmit legal information, but also process it, for other-
wise we would not be able to navigate ourselves through this emerging ‘hyperlaw’ and
to manage the enormous amount of legal information.
We have already discussed how digitalised legal information is communicated today.
Here we can enrich the argument by several important insights from the history of legal
publication models. First, Big Data analytics and self-learning algorithms present a tech-
nological challenge that is comparable to the invention of writing or printing press and,
therefore, can justify an increased interest in re-thinking the current methods of dissem-
ination of legal information. Second, the innovation regarding dissemination of legal in-
V. Janeˇcek / Personalised Dissemination of Legal Information98
formation could be justified if it brings important benefits, including a more efficient and
sustainable communication of the relevant legal information. Third, while it can make
sense to personalise various aspects of the publication model (including personalisation
of the law), the history proves the importance of keeping the law as a system, hence
keeping it organised within one model. Historically, this need was manifested in attempts
to centralise the publication and dissemination of law. Today, the ICTs allow us to keep
authoritative record of legal data even in a decentralised model, but we should not forget
that it is a model to serve one system of official state law.
5. Could Personalised Dissemination of Legal Information Be the Right Change?
We can see that the digital challenge compels us to re-think the current publication model
of law in order to facilitate more efficient and sustainable communication of legal infor-
mation. As such, new ICTs and Big Data can be clearly used as a force for good [16].
With an ICTs- and Big Data-powered personalised dissemination of legal information,
the relevant law could reach more addressees, and this could lead to an overall increase
in our knowledge of the law. Without doubt this amounts a highly valuable good. Be-
sides, the proposed innovation could co-exist with the existing system of authoritative
publication of law, which would not undermine the law as a unified system. Yet from a
policy perspective, we must ask a more pragmatic question: Would this change be not
too costly?
The issue of costs can be dealt with at various levels. We could compare the overall
benefits of the envisaged new system with the overall costs of running this system, but
then we would probably run into a question whether it is not too costly to have any
legal system at all. Given that we have laws and legal systems, we should probably be
comparing the costs of the present system of access to legal information with the costs of
the suggested personalised dissemination of legal information. We should be comparing
these costs in relation to the joint objective of those two alternatives: the costs of efficient
and sustainable communication of legal information.
On this level of comparison, the policy question boils down to the question of
whether the economic costs of developing and running the suggested system of person-
alised dissemination of legal information would be lower or higher than money paid by
every law-abiding citizen or company for the provision of professional legal services that
currently facilitates access legal information. Without empirical data and clear methodol-
ogy, this question is very hard to answer – especially since the costs of legal services dif-
fer significantly across countries and even within the countries. But I doubt many lawyers
would bet their money on the current system as the cheaper alternative. In fact, person-
alised dissemination of legal information could also be cost-efficient for specialists who
could save some transaction costs on researching the existing law.
Overall, the suggested method of dissemination of legal information could not only
bring more efficient societal organisation and sustainable social cohesion achieved via
the increased knowledge of the law, but it could bring down the total costs of access to
legal information. Personalised dissemination could close the gap between those who
should know the law and those who could access it. The witty idea about this innovative
proposition is that legal information would access people, not vice versa. This could
not only reduce costs but also overcome the traditional barrier in people’s laziness and
V. Janeˇcek / Personalised Dissemination of Legal Information 99
comfortableness. The new ICTs could communicate the law actively themselves. If we
want to use legal information to steer public knowledge, to educate, to unite, and better
organise ourselves (eg in the face of global challenges), this could be the way forward.
References
[1] Janeˇ
cek, V. (2019). Digitalised Legal Information: Towards a New Publication Model. In Öhman, C. &
Watson, D. (Eds.). The 2018 Yearbook of the Digital Ethics Lab. Springer.
[2] Biasiotti, M. A. & Faro, S. (Eds.) (2011). From Information to Knowledge: Online Access to Legal
Information-Methodologies, Trends and Perspectives. IOS Press.
[3] Bench-Capon, T. et al. (2012). A History of AI and Law in 50 Papers: 25 Years of the International
Conference on AI and Law. Artificial Intelligence and Law, 20(3), 215-319.
[4] Greenleaf, G., Mowbray, A. & Chung, P. (2018). Building Sustainable Free Legal Advisory Systems:
Experiences from the History of AI & Law. Computer Law & Security Review, 34(2), 314-326.
[5] Busch, C. & De Franceschi, A. (2018). Granular Legal Norms: Big Data and the Personalization of
Private Law. In Mak, V., Tai, E. T. T. & Berlee, A. (Eds.). Research Handbook in Data Science and Law.
Edward Elgar Publishing.
[6] Casey, A. J. & Niblett, A. (2016). Self-Driving Laws. University of Toronto Law Journal, 66(4), 429-
442.
[7] Ben-Shahar, O. & Porat, A. (2016). Personalizing Negligence Law. New York University Law Review,
91(3), 627-688.
[8] Porat, A. & Strahilevitz, L. J. (2014). Personalizing Default Rules and Disclosure with Big Data. Michi-
gan Law Review, 112, 1417-1478.
[9] BBC (2018). Cambridge Analytica: Closure ‘Will Not Stop Investigation’, https://www.bbc.co.uk/
news/uk-43985186.
[10] Charpin, D. (2010). Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia (trans: Todd, J. M.).
University of Chicago Press.
[11] Kramer, S. N. (1958). History Begins at Sumer. Thames & Hudson.
[12] Buringh, E. & Van Zanden, J. L. (2009). Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed
Books in Europe, a Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries. The Journal
of Economic History, 69(2), 409-445.
[13] Eisenstein, E. L. (2012). The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe,2
nd ed., Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
[14] Janeˇ
cek, V. (2017). Kritika Právní Odpovˇednosti. Wolters Kluwer.
[15] Floridi, L. (2012). Hyperhistory and the Philosophy of Information Policies. Philosophy & Technology,
25(2), 129-131.
[16] Taddeo, M. & Floridi, L. (2018). How AI Can Be a Force for Good. Science, 361(6404), 751-752.
V. Janeˇcek / Personalised Dissemination of Legal Information100
