Law, Rules, Machines

The aim of the thesis is to outline some of the challenges raised by the encounter between law and computational technology in the perspective of the Rule of Law. The development and spread of such technologies, indeed, goes along with the strengthening of a narrative which, harkening back to a series of criticalities running through the whole history of the doctrine of the Rule of Law, depicts the latter as inevitably facing the risk of degenerating into the Rule of Men and, on the other hand, envisions legal automation as the potential solution of the troubles of law. The present research will attempt to investigate the assumptions which ground the desirability and, above all, the very intelligibility of the ideal of a Rule of Machines.