'Computational legalism and the affordance of delay in law' by Laurence Diver

Computational legalism and the affordance of delay in law

The fourth online-first article (half December 2020) argues the crucial importance of delay in law and the rule of law. Whereas efficiency is often associated with speed, Laurence Diver, founding member of this journal’s editorial team, argues that the slowness of a text-driven legal practice may be a feature rather than a bug when it comes to legal protection. To make this point, Diver coined the concept of a ‘hermeneutic gap’ and in this article he explores to what extent ‘slow computing’ might contribute to sustaining this gap before bridging it in the context of legal practice.

Reply by Ewa Luger, Chancellor's Fellow, University of Edinburgh.