Our current legal system is to a great extent the product of an earlier period of social and economic transformation. From the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, as accountability for industrial-age harms became a pervasive source of conflict, the U.S. legal system underwent profound, tectonic shifts. Today, ownership of information-age resources and accountability for information-age harms have become pervasive sources of conflict, and different kinds of change are emerging. In Between Truth and Power, Julie E. Cohen explores the relationships between legal institutions and political and economic transformation. Systematically examining struggles over the conditions of information flow and the design of information architectures and business models, she argues that as law is enlisted to help produce the profound economic and sociotechnical shifts that have accompanied the emergence of the informational economy, it is too is transforming in fundamental ways. Drawing on elements from legal theory, science and technology studies, information studies, communication studies and organization studies to develop a complex theory of institutional change, Cohen develops an account of the gradual emergence of legal institutions adapted to the information age and of the power relationships that such institutions reflect and reproduce. A tour de force of ambitious interdisciplinary scholarship, Between Truth and Power will transform our thinking about the possible futures of law and legal institutions in the networked information era.

About the Author
Julie E. Cohen is Mark Claster Mamolen Professor of Law and Technology at the Georgetown University Law Center. Professor Cohen teaches and writes about privacy, surveillance, information platforms, intellectual property, and the governance of information and communication networks. She is also the author of Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code, and the Play of Everyday Practice.

Reviews
Julie Cohen, a legal scholar, is the latest to undertake the challenge of charting that process for an information-driven culture. While her book follows on other ambitious, synthesizing work such as Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and Nicolas Suzor's Lawless, it uniquely offers a detailed look at how the rise of powerful information intermediaries operates within and with the active assistance of legal, regulatory and political systems. * International Journal of Communication *



Book Information
ISBN 9780190246693
Author Julie E. Cohen
Format Hardback
Page Count 376
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 647g
Dimensions(mm) 238mm * 162mm * 34mm