Amanda Perry-Kessaris and Nina Toivonen
Laws are part of legal systems. Lawyers design those systems. And law(yer)s impact upon other human and non-human systems. Yet law(yers) and systems-oriented design(ers) tend not to interact. This paper seeks to bridge that divide by making the systemic dimensions of law more apparent to designers, and by making the potential of systems-oriented design methods to support legal thinking and practice more apparent to lawyers. We first introduce systemic designers to law(yers), and law(yers) to systemic design(ers), using the common ground of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory. Building on Bhumika Billa’s Information Theory of Law, we explore how legal systems include (are “cognitively open” to) those forms of information that align with established forms of legal communication, treating them as “sounds”; and exclude others, treating them as “noise” or ignoring them altogether (“silence”). We then argue that methods from systems-oriented design can help to make these dynamics, and the injustices that they produce, more appreciable to lawyers and non-lawyers. We underpin this argument with insights from an experiment exploring the potential of a particular method, (gigamapping), to support those seeking to address the specific problem (tech-driven indebtedness) in a particular context (Finland). We conclude that such methods have the potential to help us to hold space for information typically excluded by legal systems by making them visually present and navigable. In so doing, they can encourage greater reflexivity about our own positionality within legal systems, either as “sourcers”, “coders”, “decoders” or “silencers” of information. If law is to play a meaningful role in addressing systemic injustices, such reflexivity is crucial. The paper can also be read as an attempt to manage noise, and to highlight and, where possible, break, silences by decoding, re-coding and transmitting messages between law(yers) and systems-oriented design(ers); as well as between the legal systems and those who use, or are otherwise affected by, them. The scope for, and potential rewards from, such interdisciplinary communication is vast.
Keywords: law, legal design, systems-oriented design, legal information systems, gigamapping, epistemic justice, noise.