CSLS Speaker Series – “The Un-Revolution? The Politics of Access to Legal Information in Contemporary France”

Featuring Rachel Stern, Professor of Law and Political Science, Berkeley Law

How do global legal trends play out nationally, especially in moments of technological change? This talk offers a case study of how one global technological change–the rise of big data, machine learning and natural language processing in the 2010s—intersected a heated French debate over the availability of legal information. In 2016, France’s Law for a Digital Republic promised public access to all judicial decisions, a seismic shift for a civil law country that had historically only published a limited set of cases.

Major changes often inspire resistance and, indeed, the plan to make court decisions freely and publicly available divided the French legal profession. Two loose-knit coalitions emerged: a group of technophiles and transparency advocates who wanted to transform access to legal information and a group concerned about disruption to the status quo. Drawing on work by French scholars and interviews with key players, this talk will trace the history of this contentious episode, from the initial appeal of transparency and the backlash against it through a more tranquil period of implementation in which the two halves of the French court system met their baseline legal obligations with sharply divergent levels of enthusiasm and commitment.

More broadly, France’s experience illustrates the critical, political role the legal profession plays as guardians and (sometimes) re-interpreters of law-related cultural scripts central to national identity. As judiciaries worldwide grapple with the proper boundaries of transparency in an age of big data, the French case also offers insight into the tensions and policy choices ahead, particularly surrounding privacy and the allowable conditions of data re-use.  

To read the full paper draft, click here 

Reception: Lunch 12:15-12:45p.m. in the Kadish Library 
Program: 12:45-2:00p.m. in the Philip Selznick Seminar Room

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If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) to fully participate in this event, please contact csls@law.berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.