Computer Engineering Commons^™

Robots As Legal Metaphors, Ryan Calo

Articles

This Article looks at the specific role robots play in the judicial imagination. The law and technology literature is replete with examples of how the metaphors and analogies that courts select for emerging technology can be outcome determinative. Privacy law scholar Professor Daniel Solove argues convincingly, for instance, that George Orwell's Big Brother metaphor has come to dominate, and in ways limit, privacy law and policy in the United States. Even at a more specific, practical level, whether a judge sees email as more like a letter or a postcard will dictate the level of Fourth Amendment protection she is …