JILT 1998 (1) - Special Introduction

Introduction

to the Special Feature on
The Citizen in The Information Society -
Legal Issues From the Perspective of the Citizen

This Introduction was published on 27 February 1998.

Citation: Blume P, 'Introduction to the Special Feature on The Citizen in The Information Society - Legal Issues From the Perspective of the Citizen', 1998 (1) The Journal of Information, Law and Technology (JILT). <http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/issue/1998_1/blume.htm>. New citation as at 1/1/04: <http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/jilt/1998_1/specialintro/>

The legal regulation of the information society is a complex societal and legal policy issue. As it is well-known there exist a huge number of different legal aspects that must be considered in order to develop a consistent and expedient new regulation. As always legal policy is concerned with the balancing of interests and to some extent there are no right answers. Choices have to be made and it may be difficult to know whether these will result in a satisfactory regulation.

This issue of JILT has the perspective of the individual citizen and its aim is to make a contribution as to how the legal rules ought to be drafted in order to ensure the best regulation for citizens. The areas covered are data protection, automized public administration and general rights in the information society. These are just some of the questions that can be considered from this perspective. Hopefully these articles can inspire others to analyse their areas of interest from the viewpoint of the citizen. This is important as in many legal policy fora, government and industry are strongly represented while for many different reasons this is not the case with respect to the ordinary citizen. Information technology law should accordingly pay special attention to the citizen.

The information society can only show its durability if it provides an acceptable legal protection of its citizens. A satisfactory balancing of interests is therefore a must for the rapidly developing legal regulation of this society.