In the course of reading an article full of things I didn’t agree with–such as the assertion that “legal scholars have generally overlooked robotics,” with our Robot Law book cited as an honorable exception when it is instead the leading edge of a trend–I came upon an arresting sentence:
[T]he law is characterised by an increasingly central role played by facts, in the sense that there is ‘an extreme virulence of facts, which have the vigour to affect the law and shape it.’
The quoted part is attributed to P. Grossi, ‘Sulla odierna fattualità del diritto’ Giustizia civile, I, 13 (2014). I wonder if it has the same connotations in the original Italian?
In the US, one might be tempted to ask whether facts are indeed more central than they used to be. It could surely be argued, for example, that the move towards statute and away from common law has been largely a victory of rules and theories over facts.
But lets not bother with picky details. I prefer to luxuriate in the idea of an ‘extreme virulence of facts.’ Not perhaps the best name for a band, but it would be a heck of a good name for a blog.
And perhaps it is also an apt description of what starts January 20 at noon?
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