How do we as a society make digitalization, rule of law and digital citizenship interact rather than collide? With their upcoming seminar series on digital citizenship in a legal perspective, Bettina Lemann Kristiansen (Professor at the Department of Law, AU) and Per Andersen (Professor at the Department of Law, SDU) will bring together researchers and practitioners to learn more about the pitfalls and opportunities in the approach to digitalization within the legal framework of the Danish democracy. 

What is your academic background?

We are both Law Professors, and, more specifically, we specialize in sociology of law and legal history respectively. Both subjects are concerned with the interaction between societal developments and law, including how technological developments affect legal workflows and the balance between professional specialization, societal efficiency and legal certainty. Bettina is employed at the Department of Law at Aarhus University, and Per has recently moved from there to the Department of Law at SDU, where he will help launch a law program in Esbjerg.

What is your project about and how is it related to SHAPE's work?

Our project is closely related to SHAPE's work - in fact, it hit right at the core of it, but with a legal angle.

Denmark is one of the most digitalized countries in the world, and there is a lot of political attention on maintaining this position. In May 2022, the Danish government therefore launched a digitalization strategy with the aim of increasing digital security, supporting the digital skills of Danes and businesses, creating better welfare, etc. The strategy assumes that digitalization in the coming years will be supported by legislation that ensures "an efficient and user-friendly digital administration, an up-to-date framework for the use of new technology, and that digital solutions are developed on the basis of citizens' legal certainty", as it states.

The fact that digital citizenship is both an end and a means, i.e. in itself a prerequisite for achieving the goal, inherently challenges the issue of the legal certainty of the individual citizen, especially in a transformation phase such as the one we are currently in the midst of. If it is a prerequisite to be a digital user in order to be able to participate in the development of digital citizenship and be covered by society's general legal safeguards, how does one stand in both the transition phase and afterwards if one is not a trained digital user? How can untrained digital users keep track of where their data is being used and for what purpose? How can an untrained digital user understand whether administrative law decisions, which may increasingly be made by algorithms, are legally compliant? And how can the very core of law - judicial discretion - be incorporated in a form that makes sense in relation to an increased digitalization of both public and private law?

These are the perspectives we are interested in learning more about from an approach that includes both a theoretical and, above all, a practical angle, because digitalization is here to stay, so the question is how to make it succeed while not compromising fundamental legal certainty guarantees.

What activities have you been able to develop as a result of the cooperation with SHAPE?

We have had the opportunity to gather a group of interesting people for a series of seminars that will focus on the tension between digitalization as an efficiency-enhancing technology that is here to stay and the issue of legal certainty. These are people who either work in this field of tension on a daily basis and therefore have experience of how to deal with it, or who, on a more theoretical background, study and try to reconcile the many different interests at stake.

The first seminar on April 26 will include presentations by Bettina Lemann Kristiansen and Professor Dag Wiese Schartum from Senter for rettsinformatikk, University of Oslo. 

What are your hopes for the collaboration with SHAPE?

Our interest in the tension between technology and the rule of law stems, of course, from our interest in the legal field, which is undergoing a transformation to a degree we have probably not seen before, but since the issues we deal with are not purely legal, but are linked to the way we live together and the way we have organized our society, the contact with SHAPE and the environment centered around SHAPE is a great opportunity to get new and different professional inspiration. So just being part of the environment makes a lot of sense. One should not underestimate the fact that there is a place that facilitates networking - so we hope that the collaboration and the environment will bring some good insights and maybe a joint project or two.

Read more about the coming seminar here.