(Legal Design) Research through Litigation

Abstract: This paper proposes the concept of 'research through litigation', where a HCI researcher would bring a claim in the legal system in order to understand judicial attitudes towards technologies. Based on my seven years of experience of bringing legal cases as a computer scientist in Tribunals, I demonstrate the value of this approach by presenting multiple case studies, which illustrate the counter-intuitive approach towards technology taken by Tribunals. This exercise surfaced some serious (and somewhat surreal) concerns with the operation of the justice system, as well as demonstrating how research through litigation changed the law on several occasions. This work therefore makes important methodological and practical contributions to the nascent topic of legal (interaction) design, especially from a methodological standpoint.