On 24-25 June, in cooperation with Future Law Lab, NAWA National Academic Exchange Agency, Jagiellonian University and Una Europa, the Private Law of Data project organised an international seminar entitled Reimagining the Future of Law.

On 24-25 June, in cooperation with Future Law Lab, NAWA National Academic Exchange Agency, Jagiellonian University and Una Europa, the Private Law of Data project organised an international seminar entitled Reimagining the Future of Law.

The event aimed to facilitate dialogue between scholars from the universities making up the Una Europa Alliance. The Seminar created a space of mutual learning, enabling the participants to share their present work, take a glimpse at the frontier of research in areas other than their own, and allow new ideas to spark and grow.

The Seminar featured 11 papers relating to the intersections of law, society & new technologies. Among these, there have been both papers discussing how technological advances challenge the law conceptually or normatively, and how the technical developments reshape the methods at the disposal of legal scholars.

We can’t predict the future, but we can try to steer it in certain directions. To do so, however, we need a firm understanding of the current trends shaping our societies. Digitalization is one of them. With more spheres of life moving online, the world is getting smaller, yet inequalities are growing. Unprecedented amounts of data are generated, leading to both good and malicious uses of the new technologies. As certain old centers of power wither, new ones emerge. The law plays a role in causing these transformations and has a role to play in making sure that the weakest among us are not harmed while the benefits are justly shared. All these rapid socio-technological changes affect legal scholarship. On the one hand, new kinds of questions need answering. On the other, new methods of addressing them become available. And each one of us is a participant-observer in these changes.