Law in the Digital Age: How Visual Communication Technologies are Transforming the Practice, Theory, and Teaching of Law

58 Pages Posted: 20 Sep 2005

See all articles by Neal Feigenson

Neal Feigenson

Quinnipiac University - School of Law

Richard K. Sherwin

New York Law School

Christina Spiesel

Yale University - Law School

Date Written: August 30, 2005

Abstract

Law today has entered the digital age. The way law is practiced - how truth and justice are represented and assessed - is increasingly dependent on what appears on electronic screens in courtrooms, law offices, government agencies, and elsewhere. Practicing lawyers know this and are rapidly adapting to the new era of digital visual rhetoric. Legal theory and education, however, have yet to catch up.

This article is the first systematic effort to theorize law's transformation by new visual and multimedia technologies and to set out the changes in legal pedagogy that are needed to prepare law students for practice in the new environment. The article explores the consequences for legal theory and practice of the shift from an objectivist to a constructivist approach to human knowledge, using an expanded, multidisciplinary understanding of rhetoric to analyze the elusiveness of evidentiary truth and the nature and ethics of persuasion in the digital era.

Keywords: legal studies, public law & legal theory, law and technology, legal theory

Suggested Citation

Feigenson, Neal and Sherwin, Richard Kenneth and Spiesel, Christina O., Law in the Digital Age: How Visual Communication Technologies are Transforming the Practice, Theory, and Teaching of Law (August 30, 2005). NYLS Legal Studies Research Paper No. 05/06-6, Barbados Group Working Paper No. 05-06, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=804424 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.804424

Neal Feigenson

Quinnipiac University - School of Law ( email )

275 Mt. Carmel Ave.
Hamden, CT 06518
United States

Richard Kenneth Sherwin (Contact Author)

New York Law School ( email )

185 West Broadway
New York, NY 10013
United States

Christina O. Spiesel

Yale University - Law School ( email )

P.O. Box 208215
New Haven, CT 06520-8215
United States

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