20 Jahre IRIS: Trends und Communities der Rechtsinformatik / 20 Years of IRIS: Trends and Communities of Legal Informatics – digitale Ausgabe zum Tagungsband des 20. Internationalen Rechtsinformatik Symposions IRIS 2017.
Dear Readers,
This year's proceedings of the International Legal Informatics Symposium IRIS are, once again, not only published as a book, but also digitally, in form of this special edition of Jusletter IT. The International Legal Informatics Symposium takes place for the 20th time this year. An anniversary like this gives reason to look back.
The history of IRIS began with the general topic «References and Hyperlinks in the Law», at that time under the name «International Legal Informatics Colloquium», the following years with the subtitle «Salzburg Legal Informatics Talks». For a long time now, the International Legal Informatics Symposium has been covering a wide range of subjects and has been arranged with varying focal points by a large organization team. It has established itself as the leading scientific conference of legal informatics in Central Europe. Many of the topics discussed at IRIS have lost none of their relevance: «Semantic and Social Web» (IRIS2009) is one of those. It might be that only professional circles are acquainted with the growing importance of automatic semantic analyses; the social web on the other hand is already capable of winning election campaigns.
The «Reduction of Complexity – by IT and Law» (IRIS2008) is another concern still present – this can be seen in the topic «Legal Information» of the proceedings at hand. Actually, even the first ever IRIS-topic has maintained its topicality, although this is only apparent at second glace. Hyperlinks have been gaining popularity with the appearance of the World Wide Web, which – at the time of the first conference – had only been publicly accessible for about six years. While the handling of explicitly set hyperlinks as well as the identification of textual references are self-evident today, connections of implied relations are still challenging. Formulated further, we are talking about «Networks» (IRIS2016), which, for example, can be established between documents of any kind.
The 20th International Legal Informatics Symposium deals with a network, too: research and pratice, researchers and practitioners are connecting in the communities of legal informatics. This year, we focus directly on the communities as well as the trends of legal informatics that have characterized our collaborative work and will continue to do so in the upcoming 20 years of IRIS.
As usual, the IRIS special edition comprises, alongside with new scientific evidence, articles regarding practical problems and applications of legal informatics. Carrying forward the multimedia publication in cooperation with Editions Weblaw, some of the speeches held at IRIS will later be available as podcasts, too.
The special edition is composed of the following thematic groups:
|
|
As adopted last year, the papers peer reviewed by the jury of the LexisNexis Best Paper Awards and the top-10 papers are indicated. We would like to thank the members of the jury, Assoc.-Prof. Dr. Christian Bergauer, ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dietmar Jahnel, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Peter Mader, Assoc.-Prof. DI Mag. Dr. Michael Sonntag, ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. DDr. Erich Schweighofer, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Staudegger and Prof. DI Dr. Maria Wimmer.
Subscribers can also find all the articles of Jusletter IT – the magazine for IT and Law – within the Weblaw App. The App can be downloaded for Android (via Google play) and Apple (via App Store).
We hope that the proceedings of the 20th International Legal Informatics Symposium IRIS, in printed and electronic form, will find as much interest as the IRIS publications of previous years!
Vienna, Bern and Saarbrücken, in February 2017
Erich Schweighofer, Franz Kummer, Walter Hötzendorfer and Christoph Sorge
