Informatics and the Foundations of Legal Reasoning represents a close collaboration between a wide range of disciplines and countries. Fourteen papers, together with a long analytical introduction by the editors, were selected from the contributions of legal theorists, computer scientists, philosophers and logicians who were members of an International Working Group supported by the European Commission. The Group was mandated to work towards determining how far the law is amenable to formal modeling, and in what ways computers might assist legal (...) thinking and practice. The book is the result of discussions held by the Group over two and half years. It will help students and researchers from different backgrounds to focus on a common set of topics of increasing general interest. It embodies the results of work in progress and suggests many issues for further discussion. A stimulating text for undergraduate and graduate courses in law, philosophy and computer science departments, as well as for those interested in the place of computers in legal practice, especially at the international level. (shrink)

Transparency generates a paradox. For the way that we make things transparent is by simplification which at the same time masks all the information and thus contributes to opacity. The paper looks at how this paradox is played out in the contexts of the interplay between legal rules and particularity and between political representation and complete democracy. This raises questions of the Rule of Law and the functions and meanings of democratic legitimacy and though these are different questions, they are (...) closely related and overlapping. Finally, it looks at how the issues come into focus in questions of governance of an entity like the EU which should not be seen either on the model of a union of states or a nation state itself. (shrink)

"The present volume deals with a number of fundamental issues in philosophy of law and social philosophy. The reviews and perspectives it represents are thoroughly international in scope and range, with the participation of leading thinkers from six continents. Within the overall theme of 'Enlightenment, Rights and Revolution', each of the sub-themes has been so well explored by its authors that the whole does amount to more than the sum of its parts. As editors, we might have been temped to (...) claim credit for this beyond our due; in truth, however, the authors of the essays which make up the book did it all with a minimum of editorial intervention, and in a very short time. We are profoundly grateful to them all."--Preface. (shrink)