How Will AI Change the Law?

AI is advancing rapidly. New tools with the potential to change law and legal practice are released every day. But what exactly will change? And how? These are the questions explored by participants in the Chicago/Oxford symposium on ‘How will AI Change the Law?’

The symposium was cohosted by the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics at the University of Chicago, the University of Chicago Law Review Online, and the Oxford Business Law Blog.

We are excited to introduce here a series of posts from symposium participants based on their contributions to the conference.

We are all aware that AI tools have passed the inflection point of their exponential growth and that the law is scrambling to keep up. Much of current scholarship and policy-making focuses on the regulation of AI. For example, the European Parliament adopted the European AI Act on 13 March 2024. It is an impressive and voluminous piece of legislation, running into hundreds of pages.

The Chicago/Oxford symposium reversed the inquiry. Rather than ask how the law should govern and safeguard society’s AI transformation, we asked how data and AI will sharpen and change the substance of legal rules. How will doctrines of private and public law, rules of procedure and evidence, or the practice and interpretation of law evolve as big data and AI infiltrate their domain? If data replace evidence, and algorithms augment and replace human discretion, how will the content of the law change?

We invited presenters to imagine the future of their field of law. Are there longstanding rules or principles that will decline? New ones that will rise? How will the administration of the law—in legislation, regulation, judging, and legal practice—adapt? Are these changes desirable? What will be the consequences for the legal system?

Symposium participants offered thought-provoking contributions on ‘automation rights’, on AI and tort and competition law, on algorithmic negotiations, on AI and securities law and corporate judgment rules, and on AI and corporate insolvency law.

Humanity must live with AI and make the best of it. We should not just build breakwaters against the AI wave. We should also try to ride this wave. Legal rules and concepts are important tools for this. We hope that the ideas presented at the conference and reflected in the contributions to this series will help achieve this goal.

Omri Ben-Shahar is Leo and Eileen Herzel Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago.

Anthony Casey is Donald M. Ephraim Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Chicago.

Horst Eidenmüller is Statutory Professor for Commercial Law at the University of Oxford.

The posts published in the series ‘How AI Will Change the Law’ can be consulted here.