Law and Complexity Call for Papers

This satellite session helps establish a dialogue between complex systems scientists and legal scholars. How do the methods and the fundamental principles of complexity science help shed light on the dynamics and functions of law? How do legal theories and the content of laws help us understand how structure and regularity emerge in complex systems? These questions are of central scientific importance for the study of social systems. They are also of great importance today, as several crises – such as the ecological crisis – as well as large economic shifts – such as the rise of the information economy – require new legal thinking.
This satellite session aims to build the foundations for collaboration between complex systems, law, computational social science, economics and political science to address these questions. Morning sessions will address fundamental questions about the basic elements of a legal system and of laws, the mechanisms by which these elements structure societal interactions, and the parallels that exist between the role of laws in society and the role of information in biology. Afternoon sessions will address governance problems from the angle of law and complexity.