Quantum law: first rules for a global culture

Jeffrey Ritter, Esq.

"Quantum Law" is a new term, coined to define the emerging new rules, systems, and controls through which we are beginning to govern a unified, connected, global culture. Quantum law anticipates that compliance will be calculated and measured through complex information systems rather than judged by human emotions, curtailing reliance on inefficient advocacy mechanisms for determining the truth.

The pace of change in how we govern society is accelerating, transforming how compliance with rules—in society, in business, and across virtually all economic and commercial systems—is determined. This seminar introduces a first set of observations on the implications for how we must engineer and design our new systems and solutions.

As a concept, quantum law embraces how we are authoring our rules differently, favoring metrics over evaluative criteria. Quantum law also provides a structural foundation for constructing and governing systems that will work across complex, diverse rule systems (legal, technology, business, and economic).

There are initially two dimensions of quantum law that are both mathematically and computationally complex, for which answers will be crafted by engineers, not lawyers:

* How do we author our rules to own and control digital information in order to bond the rules to the information and enable its proper governance (ownership, control, transfer) without regard to location?

* As with mass and momentum, how do we calculate and express two volatile, uncertain metrics for determining whether any digital information will be treated as property, namely its trustworthiness (factual integrity, probability, provenance, etc.) and its economic value?

This seminar is intended as a launching pad for conversation:

* What happens when oral testimony is entirely replaced by machine-generated event records as controlling evidence of the truth?

* How do key concepts from the evolution of quantum thinking, such as the observer effect and the uncertainty principle, influence the substance and form of quantum law?

* What should be our next steps in navigating the growing chasms between the engineering solutions we are building and the texture and dimension of the rule of law?

An initial version of this presentation was made in 2015 to the American Bar Association on the 20th anniversary of the formation of the Committee on the Law of Cyberspace. This will be my first chance sharing these concepts within the computer science discipline.