What is the future of law in the face of artificial intelligence and virtual reality? Alejandro Dabah answers.

Alejandro Dabah has been a lawyer and university professor since 1995. He has published articles and chapters in specialized books. His interest in the tensions between law , technology , and society led him to speak at national and international conferences and to create Revés, a legal outreach project with a critical spirit. Published by Godot, he has just published Revés, the Other Side of Law.

In this work, he takes a critical, provocative, and deeply necessary look at the legal world . With years of experience at the intersection of law, technology, and society, the author proposes democratizing legal knowledge and rethinking the normative systems that govern our lives. His book, which combines dissemination, narrative, and analysis, seeks to bring the law closer to everyone, without exclusive technicalities or incomprehensible jargon, and poses an urgent question: can the law continue to function as if the world had not changed?

In an interview with Clarín , Dabah explains the origins of the project and the challenges facing law in the face of phenomena such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and new forms of violence.

–In the book, you start from the premise that “knowledge of the law should not be a privilege of lawyers and judges, but a right of every person.” How is this achieved in everyday life?

–Making the law known to the general public is a challenge. I believe this can be achieved through several actions. For example, I think it's important to train legal practitioners (such as judges, lawyers, and notaries) and communicators in general to use clear language without losing precision. You don't need to speak "funny" to demonstrate knowledge. Another useful way is to use social media as a means of dissemination. Through Instagram accounts, TikTok, YouTube channels, and even memes, knowledge can be transmitted that helps people recognize their rights and how to exercise them. I also think that dissemination through narratives—that is, telling stories where the law appears as a central element—is a good tool for connecting with people. This is what I tried to do in my book.

–“Not knowing the laws is like entering a game of chess without knowing the moves of the pieces,” you also write: the majority of citizens don’t know the laws. Do you think it’s on purpose that it’s so difficult to know them?

–I find it hard to believe there's a plan devised to prevent people from knowing their rights. However, there's no doubt that the population's ignorance, the lack of knowledge, is used by those in power to dominate. It's clear that the more people are suspicious, questioning, and have a critical view of the world, the more difficult it will be to dominate them. In that sense, I don't think it's difficult to know one's rights, but it may be inconvenient for some.

–You also tell of a recurring dream of yours: they call you to tell you that you owe the last subject at college, and the question they ask you at the end is, “What is law?” Could you answer it?

In the book, I try to distance myself from traditional education, where the teacher or educator is a kind of "shaman" whose function is to reveal absolute truths that they think no one knows. I don't believe in that. Instead, I try to provide some tools that allow readers to reach their own conclusions, which don't necessarily have to be the same as mine. In this sense, and rather than giving a definition of law, I'm interested in thinking of it as a system composed of several interacting elements. Among those elements, I think there are three that characterize it: norms, the population's belief in the binding force of those norms, and the subjects to whom they are addressed. From these three elements, I believe we can create the entire universe called "law" and develop the definitions that each person feels best fit reality.

–What are the basic differences between law and justice?

–Law is an idea, a concept; on the other hand, justice is a value that serves to qualify that idea. This means that law doesn't necessarily have to be just. It can or cannot be. In the book, I use as an example the case of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which "legalized" Nazism and imposed a legal regime of racial discrimination that laid the groundwork for the systematic persecution of Jews and other minorities. These laws were part of German law and, of course, were not characterized by being just. However, that didn't prevent them from being part of German law. This indicates that law and justice are distinct concepts that don't necessarily go hand in hand.

–You also talk about the rights of children, adolescents, and the elderly. How are they enforced in today's democracies?

There is a set of standards, both national and international, that address the protection of the rights of children, adolescents, and the elderly. These standards are full of good intentions that, in part, I believe have been fulfilled. I am convinced, for example, that children live much better today than they did 200 years ago. Let us remember that during the so-called Industrial Revolution, children, and to a lesser extent girls, were employed in factories under deplorable working conditions, which caused them all kinds of problems. There are even medical reports from the time that showed widespread premature aging among children due to these conditions. While it is true that children's rights continue to be violated in many places, I believe that the enactment of some standards contributed to improving the quality of life for this segment of the population. For example, infant mortality has decreased by more than 90% on average globally from 1825 to today, and that was, among other things, due to the existence of regulations that were dedicated to protecting them. Of course, that's not the only reason. Now, often those same regulatory systems are what end up discriminating against or harming certain sectors. And it seems to me that this was clearly seen with old age and the regulations that were issued during the COVID-19 pandemic. During that period when the pandemic spread, some health policies suggested that, in situations of scarce resources, certain treatments should be ruled out for older people, adopting an absolutely discriminatory approach based on age. By this I mean that regulations are not always done with a protective purpose.

–What is the future and the reverse of law?

–I think the future of law faces us with an enormous challenge. I believe that legal systems, as we know them today, can only provide answers to a world that no longer exists. We face, for example, the challenge of considering whether machines that use artificial intelligence should be granted legal personality; of answering who will be responsible if they fail; of asking ourselves how we will create a regulatory system that is applied without knowing exactly where the events occurred, because these events often occur in cyberspace, a concept unknown to law. The legal systems of almost every country in the world have a parochialist vision that fails to align with current reality. And this is where the concept of the legal upside-down becomes important; because, to find the answers that today's world needs, we must abandon old structures, dare to rethink everything without fear of getting nowhere, be creative in the solutions we propose, and take the risk of change. To do this, I believe it is essential to turn the law upside down and be able to see it from a different angle. That's what I try to do in the book.

Backhand, the other side of right , by Alejandro Dabah (Godot).