Lecture
Humans as a Legal Technology
- Date
- Thursday 9 April 2026
- Time
- Location
- Kamerlingh Onnes Building
Steenschuur 25
2311 ES Leiden - Room
- A051 - Grotius room
About the speaker
In this lecture, I delve into a development I call the emergence of new humans in European technology regulation and ethical discourses. This means that instead of natural persons, bureaucrats or civil servants, ‘humans’ are assigned legal assignments and power. Humans are required to be in the loop, on the loop, or in command. This is reflected in legal requirements such as ‘human intervention,’ ‘human oversight,’ or ‘human judgment.’ In the lecture, I aim to make two contributions. First, I will show and problematize the emergence of new ‘humans’ as a corollary of digital technologies. I argue that this ‘human’ is a conceptual transplant from the discourses of technology and its incorporation into law is uneasy. Second, I suggest that the emergence of ‘new humans’ and the following reimagining of legal professionals give rise to a new framing: adopting a wide conception of legal technology. Through this conception, we could dismantle the human/machine distinction in public administration and approach all – digital tools and humans and human legal labor, even mindsets – as legal technologies. I argue that this would add value by making visible the naïve human exceptionalism embedded in our legal thinking and would question its sustainability.
Suggested readings
- Ida Koivisto, Humans as a Legal Technology? The Emergence of ‘New Humans’ in European Technology Regulation and a Suggestion for a New Approach to Legal Technology, German Law Journal, forthcoming 2026 (?) (submitted manuscript, under review)
- Henrik Skaug Sætra, Robotomorphy: Becoming Our Creations. 2 AI AND ETHICS 5 (2022).
- Rebecca Crootof et alie, Humans in the Loop, 76 VAND. L. REV. 429 (2023).
- Guillermo Lazcoz, Paul de Hert, Humans in the GDPR and AIA governance of automated and algorithmic systems. Essential pre-requisites against abdicating responsibilities, Computer Law & Security Review, Volume 50, 2023
- Lyria Bennett Moses, How to Think About Law, Regulation and Technology: Problems with ‘Technology’ as a Regulatory Target. 5 LAW, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY, 1 (2013)
- Aziz Z. Huq, A Right to a Human Decision. 106 VA.L. REV, 611 (2020),
Short bio
Ida Koivisto is professor of public law at University of Helsinki. She specializes in digitalization of public administration, general administrative law, and different legitimation strategies of public power. She is the author of The Transparency Paradox (OUP 2022).