‘Legal by Design’ or ‘Legal Protection by Design’?

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on how machine learning (ML) and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) change the environment of the law, the substance of legal goods, and on the extent to which these changes affect legal protection. ML applications, for example, can decide a person's credit worthiness or employability. Moreover, DLTs can, for instance, self-execute transactions and policies without and beyond the law. One of the main challenges here thus concerns the regulatory effects of these novel technologies and the potential incompatibility of legal protection with techno-regulation (defined as the regulatory effects of a technology, whether or not intended). This challenge will be discussed in terms of automated compliance (‘legal by design’) and technological articulation of fundamental rights (‘legal protection by design’).