- Theory of legal informatics
- Legal information & search technologies
- Legal informatics systems & applications
- Knowlege-based process management in administrative networks
- E-Government
- Open Government
- E-Democracy
- E-Law-making
- E-Procurement
- Legal theory
- Law and language
- Legal visualisation/multisensory law
- IT law
- Data protection
- E-Commerce
- Copyright law
On the general topic «abstraction and application»:
By abstraction, the view should be focused on the essentials. In law, concrete elements and its characteristics is given a structure, particularly by means of concepts. This generalization and its formalisation constitutes the basis for the multi-layered representation of the law (text, commentary, legal ontologies, logical structures, visualisations, etc.). In computer science, abstraction is a main basis of modeling and thus the development of software. In both disciplines, and hence also in legal informatics, abstraction is the primary way to reduce complexity.
The application is a software to solve user problems. It is the practice to theory and abstraction. The app is an application for smartphones and tablet computers. While the abstraction has a very long tradition, the application and the app are a recent development. Complex processes should be supported by means of a user-friendly smartphone application, which in turn requires an abstraction (and simplification). In law, the app opens a challenge for processing complex queries and documents in a simple and user-friendly form.
The variety of other topics is best captured by reading the leads or the contributions. Data protrection, legal information and search technologies, E-Government, E-Democracy and legal visualisation/multisensory law are the focus of this issue, as usual supplemented by a wide range of IT law contributions. Open Government and Open Data demonstrate the importance of legal informatics as a pioneer for a transparent and participatory society. The contributions to law and language point to the growing importance of text-based legal linguistics.
Having said this, we hope you enjoy reading this issue!
Franz Kummer, Erich Schweighofer and as guest editor Walter Hötzendorfer
