Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Abstract

The innovations of technology neither preclude nor require fundamental transformations in the legal regime that governs them. In all cases the key issue can be framed as follows: because transitions in legal regimes are always costly and sometimes go astray, can one show that the rules of the past are so ill-fitting that some conscious and costly deviation from them is appropriate? No categorical answer is possible, for so much depends on how ill-fitting the old legal system is, how painful the transition is, and how well the new system would operate. The best we can do is to establish a weak presumption in favor of the continuation of the old legal order, given the inevitable costs of reorientation. Yet presumptions solve less than we hope because the diverse circumstances under which they are tested resist any uniform legal theory. With these inevitable caveats, this talk will address the future through the past. I shall talk about some of the historical antecedents to the coordination problems of our modern information age. Even though the technology is novel, the basic premise is not.

First Page

1137

Volume

73

Publication Date

1998

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