We live in a world of one-size-fits-all law. People are different, but
the laws that govern them are uniform. "Personalized Law"---rules that
vary person by person---will change that. Here is a vision of a brave
new world, where each person is bound by their own personally-tailored
law.
"Reasonable person" standards would be replaced by a multitude of
personalized commands, each individual with their own "reasonable you"
rule. Skilled doctors would be held to higher standards of care, the
most vulnerable consumers and employees would receive stronger
protections, age restrictions
for driving or for the consumption of alcohol would vary according the
recklessness risk that each person poses, and borrowers would be
entitled to personalized loan disclosures tailored to their unique needs
and delivered in a format fitting their mental capacity. The data and
algorithms to
administer personalize law are at our doorstep, and embryos of this
regime are sprouting.
Should we welcome this transformation of the law? Does personalized law
harbor a utopic promise, or would it produce alienation, demoralization,
and discrimination? This book is the first to explore personalized law,
offering a vision of law and robotics that delegates to machines those
tasks humans
are least able to perform well. It inquires how personalized law can be
designed to deliver precision and justice and what pitfalls the regime
would have to prudently avoid. In this book, Omri Ben-Shahar and Ariel
Porat not only present this concept in a clear, easily accessible way,
but they offer
specific examples of how personalized law may be implemented across a
variety of real-life applications.
