Institutet för Rättsinformatik
Presentation :
The Swedish Law and Informatics Research Institute, IRI, began its activities in 1968. It has grown from a modest working party to one of the major research institutes of the Faculty of Law, Stockholm University. At present, three professors of law and informatics have their work place at the IRI. Six doctoral students are active in different fields, among them ’law and information security’, ’automation in public administration’, and ’access to official documents and data’. The Institute is responsible for several teaching programmes at the law faculty, including a basic, obligatory four-week course in law and information technology and a master of law and information technology programme.
Among the present research projects of the institute, mention may be made of the following three. (a) The SAITS project in cooperation with the Swedish Institute of Computer Science. The project aims at developing models for the protection of personal data in a society where ubiquitous computing creates all kinds of new environments for day-to-day life. A forthcoming activity of this project is an international workshop titled « Wholes ». It will bring together expertise from information technology, law, and the social sciences to discuss fundamental issues of a reshaped privacy protection (see http://www.sics.se/ olleo/SAITS/index.html). (b) The SLIM project is intended to provide refined methods of legal security enhancement based on the management of information in context. Different parts of the project deal with managing version dependent text entities over time, authentication of legal texts in the context of legal information retrieval, and security imperatives in legal information (see http://www.juridicum.su.se/slim/). © The JIT programme is financed by the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems. It aims at a broad analysis of legal issues in the context of developing information and communications technologies. Several of the above mentioned doctoral projects are part of the JIT programme which will be completed in 2005.
The Swedish Institute of Law and Information Technology has close contacts with many public and private sector organs. Among other things, it serves as the secretariat of the Swedish Foundation for Legal Information, a trust created by among others the administrative branch of the Swedish Riksdag (parliament), the Swedish Ministry of Justice, the Swedish Bar Association, and a number of major Swedish vendors of electronic legal information. For many years, the Institute was involved in the work of the Swedish ICT Commission that completed its task in May 2003 (See Swedish Government Official Reports 2002:112. Law and Information Techology Swedish Views). The institute also cooperates with the Swedish Society for Computers and Law. Among other things, this cooperation involves yearly Nordic conferences and an annual publication in law and information technology.
The director of the Institute is Peter Seipel, professor of law and informatics.
