Law and computational social science

Social sciences are going through a phase of profound change due to three main factors: the resort to computational approaches, the integration, enabled by computational tools, among different disciplines and sciences, and the ever increasing availablity of information in electronic format regarding the most varied aspects of reality. Within the space of a very short time, the new scientific paradigm of computational social science emerged taking the form of an unprecedented intersection among social, information and complexity sciences.
The relationship between law and computational social science certainly deserves being developed: the scientific paradigm underlying this emerging research area can focus greater attention by lawyers on the empirical dimension of legal phenomena and greater openness to dialogue with other disciplines, two basic conditions for finding appropriate legal responses to the complexity and dynamism of contemporary society. Moreover, computational social science provides lawyers with methods and tools that seem to be able to offer a new scientific basis for their activities in the various contexts of interpretation and application of the law and also to the processes of policy and rule making.
This volume collects contributions from authors with etherogeneous background. Its aims are encouraging lawyers to imagine the application of the methods of computational social science to authentically legal problems and stimulating a reflection on whether and how the law and the way of thinking of a lawyer can be transformed by their encounter with the research paradigm of computational social science.

CONTRIBUTIONS By
ORLANDO ROSELLI, The Ever Changing Legal Dimension and the
Controversial Notions of Law and Science
DOMENICO PARISI, Robotic Societies and Law: A Plea for a Robotic
and Simulation Science of Legal Phenomena
BRUCE EDMONDS, What Social Simulation Might Tell Us about How
Law Works
KLAUS G. TROITZSCH, Legislation, Regulatory Impact Assessment and
Simulation
CRISTIANO CASTELFRANCHI, Cognitivizing “Norms”. Norm
Internalization and Processing
FEDERICO CECCONI, GIULIA ANDRIGHETTO, ROSARIA CONTE,
How Social Norms Can Make the World More Regular and Better
PIETRO TERNA, Learning Agents and Decisions: New Perspectives
NICOLA LETTIERI, DOMENICO PARISI, Exploring the Effects of Sanctions
on Damaging Actions through Artificial Societies: A Simulation Model
LUIGI BONAVENTURA, ANDREA CONSOLI, Priorities for Backlog of
Criminal Cases Pending in Courts: A Computational Agent-based Model
FABRIZIO CACCAVALE, Perspectives of the Computational Approach
as a Method for Criminological Research
FEDERICO CECCONI, Simulating Crime: Models, Methods, Tools
VALENTINA PUNZO, Agent-based Approach to Crime and Criminal
Justice Policy Analysis
NICOLAS S. MALLESON, ANDREW J. EVANS, ALISON J.
HEPPENSTALL, LINDA M. SEE, The Leeds Burglary Simulator
MIGLE LAUKYTE, An Interdisciplinary Approach to Multi-agent
Systems: Bridging the Gap between Law and Computer Science
DEBORAH DE FELICE, GIOVANNI GIUFFRIDA, GIUSEPPE GIURA,
VILHELM VERENDEL, CALOGERO G. ZARBA, Information Extraction
and Social Network Analysis of Criminal Sentences. A Sociological and Computational Approach
NICOLA LETTIERI, DELFINA MALANDRINO, RAFFAELE SPINELLI,
Text and Social Network Analysis as Investigative Tools: A Case Study
GUGLIELMO FEIS, Network Analysis Formalism and the Construction
of a Traceability System for Payments. A Sketch of Its Legal and
Sociological Aspects
TAMARA BELLONE, FRANCESCO FIERMONTE, CHIARA PORPORATO,
From “Free Information” to Its (Geo)referencing and Analisys:The “Costs” of Open Source
GUIDO MIGLIACCIO, Computational Sciences, Business Management,Accounting and Law: Potential Intersections
ERNESTO FABIANI, Law and Computational Social Science: Brief Notes of a Civil Procedure Law Scholar