WP 3: The political dimensions of private law

The third work package (WP 3) focuses on AI and the political dimensions of private law. The treatment of AI in private law touches on central questions of power and distribution and therefore inevitably also has a political dimension. The political nature of law and its science has so far been concealed rather than made transparent, especially in private law scholarship.

WP 3 deals with politics on the one hand, in that it can be shown that the private law discourse on artificial decisions also contributes to the maintenance or disruption of social power structures. On the other hand, it deals with the “political” nature of law, i.e., the more fundamental dimension or essence of politics, which is also evident in AI discourses.

One example is the debate about the “legal capacity” of artificial intelligence, because this involves a shift in the established boundaries of political participation – boundaries that have their roots precisely in the anthropocentrism of law: those who do not belong to the species of humans cannot have legal capacity.

The debate about the legal capacity of AI is therefore ultimately a debate about equality. It is about inclusion and exclusion – similar to the debate about animal rights. Against this background, work area three aims to reveal the political dimensions of the private law discussion about artificial decisions and thus make a very fundamental contribution to private law theory.