The metric legality: jurimetrics, legal cybernetics, and governance by indicators

The question of whether law is computable is not a simple one, as it raises complex issues about the autonomy of legal science within the social sciences. It involves asking whether legal practice should remain the exclusive domain of legal practitioners or become a subgenre of informatics and statistics. In either case, the use of quantitative methods distinguishes traditional legal reasoning from reductionist practices in computational law. This chapter examines the quantitative methods applied to law, including jurimetrics, legal cybernetics, empirical legal sciences, global legal indicators, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, particularly in light of the scientific progress made in the mid-twentieth century. The chapter argues that comparative law is currently undergoing an epistemological and methodological revolution, with significant global implications for a new “metric legality.” Quantitative methods present both challenges and opportunities for the legal education of future lawyers and scholars in comparative law and legal technology.