REVIEWS
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1974.tb02412.x |
| Published date | 01 November 1974 |
| Date | 01 November 1974 |
REVIEWS
COMPUTERS
AND
THE
LAW.
By
COLIN
TAPPER.
[Weidenfeld and
Tms
is an opportune time to publish a book on computers and the law. For
recently there have been unmistakable signs of interest in the problems and
opportunities that the rapidly advancing technology of digital computers
presents to the law and the lawyer. To give but two examples
:
in the Uni’ted
Kingdom lawyers have formed a charitable organisation, the Society for
Cornputers and Law Limitcd, one of whose objects is to inform lawyers and
the general public abut the ways in which computers may assist the practice
of
law; and on the international front the Council of Eurape has establishcd
two expert comniittees (with both of which the author of this
book
has been
associated)
to
make recommendations to member Governments
on
topics con-
cerned wLth computers and law.
So
it
is
both appropriate and convenient that
n
monograph should appear in which the subject is authoritatively reviewed
by an expert.
There is certainly no doubt that Tapper has an expert’s knowledge
of
the
subject. He has been actively concerned
With
computers since
1961.
This
its
longer than it appears,
for
the life-cycle
of
a new computer system, from
introduction to obsolescence,
is
no more than about six years,
so
Tapper has
seen two “generations”
of
computers come and go and this gives him
a
perspective and breadth
of
view which few other authors posscss. And it
also means that he
tias
mct most of the active research workers
so
that his
account of their computer systems derives from his personal verification of
them.
The book begins with a description
of
the essential elements
of
a
computer.
It is interesting
to
see
a
lawyer grappling with these technicalities and explain-
ing, in admirably clear and accurnte language frce from the jnrgon of the
computer scientist, what
a
computer is and what it can do. Here in
a
few
pages the reader can learn what he needs to know about hardware and soft-
ware, high-level and low-level languages, central processors, input and output
facilities, and digitnl storage on tapes, d’iscs and drums. What is more he will
get
a
grasp of the strengths and weaknesses of computers and the direction
that future developments are likely to take.
The province
of
computers and law can be divided crudely into two
domains
:
new legal problems poscd by computer opcmtions; and the computer
as nn aid,
a
helpmate for the lawyer. In the first group Tapper discusses the
two topics of rtdmissii’bility in evidence of records stored and generated by
computer, and the problem of privacy and computerised data banks. Record-
keeping and administration by computer is now commonplace in the
com-
inercial world and
kt
is necessary to ensure that transcripts of records stored
in digital form in computer memory mny be admitted as evidence of the
transactions they
record.
Such transcripts are daily being admitted in
evi-
dence by the courts (particularly the county courts) by virtue of agreement
between the parties. But what happens when there is
a
dispute
as
to their
admissibility? Tapper brings his long experience
of
the law of evidence to
bear on sections
b
and
6
of the Civil Evidence Act
1968
and provides
a
critical
eide to the procedures required by the Act and the rules made thereunder.
Most practitioners would surely ngrce that the procedures are unnecessarily
cumbersome.
No
doubt when computers become more familiar
to
the courts
the rules
will
be simplified.
The growing use
of
coniputers to store and manipulate personal infor-
Nicolson.
1978.
xvi
and
814
pp.
E5.25.1
710
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