Personalized Law and Fundamental Rights

In recent years, scholars have focused increased attention on the idea of personalized law. It suggests the creation and enforcement of individualized legal norms based on the algorithmic processing of data in the similar manner companies personalize their services using Big Data tools. The article aims to define the role and position of personalized law and to evaluate the risks and consequences of personalization in the context of the emerging digital economy. The research analyses the theoretical grounds of personalized law and justifies its interpretation from the perspective of Hart’s legal positivism striking a balance between the sociological facticity of law and normativism. The study reveals the content, essential features of personalized law and defines its concept. The author analyses the correlation of personalized law with fundamental rights, thus evaluating the risks and consequences of personalization. Particularly, the errors of the approximation of a person’s actual will could occur as part of algorithmic decision-making thereby resulting in discrimination. It appears reasonable that at the beginning, algorithmic personalization should cover only those domains which have the minimal risk of the violation of fundamental norms and of intrusion into the field of social debates. The study underscores, that the transparency of the public sector and of the data-based algorithmic decision-making process is crucial in the context of personalized law, but nevertheless could debase its idea due to opportunistic practices. The issues identified during the research lead one to suggest that professionals who have both legal education and expertise in computer sciences would be in demand in the future. Such professionals could perform the role of independent experts and neutral authority monitoring compliance with data subject’s rights.