M. Hildebrandt (Mireille)

The focus of my research is the interaction between data- and code-driven solutions on the one hand and law and the rule of law on the other. This concerns a proper understanding of the methodological integrity of the research design of such solutions, and focus on the relevant legal frameworks (e.g. fundamental rights law, data protection law, cybercrime and private law liability).

In the course of the past 15 years I have developed the notions of
- 'legal protection by design' to highlight the need to embody legal protection in data-driven environments, '
- affordance' to mark out how our technological environments enable and limit our capabilities and how this affects the substance of fundamental rights, and the notion of
- 'mode of existence of law' to investigate dependencies between the way law exists and the technological infrastructure that supports it (noting that current law is mainly text-driven).

Since 2017 I have been exploring the implications of 'legal technologies' for law and the rule of law, notably the use of NLP for the prediction of judgement or argumentation mining and the use of blockchain to enforce legal obligations.

In the context of my European project for fundamental research my team of lawyers and computer scientists published the Typology of Legal Technologies. The Typology is a webtool that offers a method, mind set and resource to assess the gap between claims made on behalf of 'legal tech' and the substantiation of these claims, see https://publications.cohubicol.com/typo