EPJ B Topical Issue : CompLex: Complexity Science for Legal Applications

Details

Published on 14 November 2024

Guest Editors: Pierpaolo Vivo, Daniel Martin Katz, J.B. Ruhl, Philipp Hövel

Submissions are invited for a Topical Issue of EPJ B on CompLex: Complexity Science for Legal Applications.

In recent years, the intersection of law, governance, and complexity science has emerged as a fascinating and important area of study (See CompLex: legal systems through the lens of complexity science for a recent review).
Modern societies are regulated by intricate legal and governance systems that share many characteristics with complex adaptive systems traditionally studied in physics and mathematics. These include nonlinear effects, feedback loops, and emergent behaviors. As our world becomes increasingly interconnected and complex, there is a growing need to apply rigorous quantitative methods to analyze and improve our legal and governance frameworks.
The study of social institutions and governance has historically been confined to philosophy and social sciences. However, interdisciplinary applications of physics and other hard sciences have had a profound impact on our understanding of complex systems in biology, economics, and other fields. It is now time to extend this approach to law and governance.
For over a decade, complexity scientists have been turning their attention to societal issues, but it is only recently that important legal and political questions have been formulated in a language that science can comprehend and meaningfully address. While some barriers still exist, the time is ripe for a full-fledged cross-fertilization between law/governance, physics, and computer science.

This Topical Collection aims to bring together researchers from diverse fields to explore how techniques and tools from Statistical Physics and other quantitative disciplines can enhance our understanding of complex legal and governance systems. By bringing together researchers from physics, applied mathematics, computer science, law, and governance, this Topical Collection will serve as a catalyst for advancing our understanding of complex legal and governance systems. It will provide valuable insights for both academics and practitioners, potentially influencing policy decisions and driving innovation in legal and governance practices. The European Journal of Physics B, with its commitment to interdisciplinary research and broad readership, is the ideal venue for this timely and important collection of works. This Topical Collection will make a lasting impact on the field and open new avenues for fruitful research at the intersection of physics and law.

This Topical Collection aims to:

1. Provide a platform for sharing cutting-edge research at the interface of law, governance, and complexity science.
2. Foster collaborations between physicists, applied mathematicians, computer scientists, legal scholars, and governance experts.
3. Showcase how quantitative approaches can offer new insights into legal and governance challenges.
4. Explore the potential of emerging technologies in addressing complex legal and governance issues.
5. Stimulate further research and innovation in this rapidly evolving field.

Topics to be covered include but are not limited to:

• Analysis and measurement of complexity in law and governance
• Formal mathematical representations of legal rules and processing of rules
• Dynamics of democratic systems, including agent-based modeling and collective behavior of normed societies
• Impact of various systems of preference aggregation on long-term institution performance
• Statistical physics of interactions between actors in the legal system
• Network-theoretical analysis of legislation, regulations and/or other system level outputs
• Modeling the stability of multi-component governance systems under constraints
• Effect of law / regulations / norms on macro level system behavior (including rule of law metrics, etc.)
• Use of statistical physics-based models to improve outcome prediction
• Governance of Information diffusion on social networks and feedback effects
• Machine-learning approaches to data mining from legal and political texts
• Topics at the interface between law and probabilistic reasoning (physics in the courtroom)
• The role of algorithmic decision-making and human-machine assisted decision making in legal/ governance systems
• Statistical inference methods for detection of criminal activity
• Game-theoretic models of judicial and political decision-making

The submissions to this Topical issue are open to all the researchers who would like to join this project. Original research papers (Regular Articles), Topical Reviews, Colloquia, Perspectives and Roadmaps are welcome (please see the definition of the article categories at : https://link.springer.com/journal/10051/aims-and-scope. . We invite contributors to communicate their intention to submit manuscripts for this Topical Issue to the Guest Editors as soon as possible. Please provide the tentative title of the paper and a short abstract. The full manuscripts should be submitted before the deadline directly to the EPJ B Editorial Office at https://www.editorialmanager.com/epjb/.

Submissions should be clearly identified as intended for the Topical Issue on ‘CompLex: Complexity Science for Legal Applications’. Accepted papers will be published continuously and will appear as soon as accepted on the journal website. The electronic version of the Topical Issue will contain all accepted papers in the order of publication. All submitted papers will be refereed according to the usual high standards of the journal. More information about EPJ B, including instructions for authors is available here.

Guest Editors :

Dr. Pierpaolo Vivo, PhD ,
Reader in Disordered Systems King’s College London (UK)
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Prof. Daniel Martin Katz, JD, PhD,
Professor of Law @ Illinois Tech - Chicago Kent College of Law, USA
Academic Director, Bucerius Center for Legal Technology & Data Science, Germany
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Prof. J.B. Ruhl, JD, PhD,
David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair in Law Director, Program on Law and Innovation Vanderbilt Law School (USA)
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Dr. Habil. Philipp Hövel,
Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
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