About The Workshop
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a peripheral phenomenon in the legal field—it is a transformative force that is reshaping the conceptual, normative, and institutional foundations of law itself. This workshop proposes a critical and interdisciplinary exploration of the profound implications that AI systems have for key legal categories such as personhood, decision-making justification, and responsibility. As AI technologies increasingly mediate legal reasoning and practice, fundamental questions arise: Can a machine be considered a legal subject, or even a bearer of rights or duties? What does it mean for a legal decision to be “motivated” when the reasoning is opaque or generated by statistical correlations? Who—or what—can be held accountable when an algorithmic system causes harm?
These questions touch the core of legal theory and practice, requiring not only technical understanding but also philosophical, ethical, and doctrinal reflection. The automation of legal reasoning through predictive analytics, natural language processing, and decision-support systems is already altering how legal professionals interpret norms, argue cases, and deliver justice. In this context, the workshop will examine the phenomenon of algorithmic justice, its promises in terms of efficiency and consistency, but also its risks regarding opacity, bias, and the erosion of deliberative legal reasoning. How can legal systems ensure transparency, due process, and fairness when decisions are shaped—or even made—by non-human agents?
Moreover, the workshop will explore the ethical implications of delegating normative tasks to autonomous systems. This delegation challenges traditional understandings of responsibility, intention, and agency—concepts deeply rooted in both legal and moral philosophy. It also opens the door to new regulatory questions: What kind of accountability frameworks are suitable for systems that lack consciousness or intentionality? Should AI systems be granted legal personality, or should responsibility always trace back to human actors, such as developers, users, or institutions?
In addition to these conceptual issues, the workshop will also address the impact of AI on legal education and professional formation. As legal practice evolves under the influence of technology, law schools and academic institutions must adapt their curricula to prepare future jurists for an environment increasingly shaped by digital tools. This includes not only technical literacy, but also critical thinking skills that enable lawyers to assess, challenge, and guide the development of AI systems in accordance with legal and ethical standards.
In sum, this workshop invites scholars from law, philosophy, ethics, and technology to engage in a critical dialogue about the future of legal thought and practice in the age of artificial intelligence. By bridging the gap between codes (in the computational sense) and norms (in the legal and ethical sense), the event seeks to rethink the foundations of law in a way that is both rigorous and imaginative—capable of responding to the profound transformations set in motion by intelligent technologies.
