Technology of Legitimating Law:

Information Epochs from Memory to Generative AI

AALL Publications Series No. 92

Paul D. Callister

University of Missouri–Kansas City

Dana Neacsu

Columbia University

$135.00

NEW BOOK!

How does technology shape the law?

Today’s AI revolution is only the latest chapter in a much longer history of legal innovation.

How Technology Shapes the Law

The Technology of Legitimating Law traces the evolution of legal authority across history, exploring how each major information revolution, from oral tradition and early writing systems to the printing press and generative AI, has shaped the way law is understood and applied.

Drawing on legal history, information science, philosophy, and media theory, Paul Douglas Callister and Dana Neacsu show how law and technology have continually shaped one another and explain why that relationship remains relevant in today’s AI-driven world.

Although the technologies have changed over time, the authors argue that the same framework helps explain everything from ancient oral traditions to today’s generative AI.

Technology (Techné)

The tools and skills used to preserve and communicate information.

Web of Beliefs

The shared assumptions that shape how societies understand truth.

Cognitive Authority

The people and institutions trusted to define what the law is.

Law

The legal rules created, interpreted, and applied by society.

From Memory to Generative AI

The Oral Tradition

How memory, poetry, and public performance preserved legal knowledge and established authority before the written word.

The Written Word

How papyrus, stone inscriptions, and early writing systems transformed legal administration, recordkeeping, and governance.

The Print Revolution

How the printing press, legal treatises, and standardized citation practices became the foundation of modern legal research and judicial stability.

The AI Era

How generative AI is reshaping legal research while raising new questions about trust, authority, and the future of the rule of law.

Inside the Book

See what you’ll find in each chapter as the authors trace the evolution of legal authority from early oral traditions to today’s AI-driven world.

Who Should Read The Technology of Legitimating Law?

Law
Librarians

Explore the history of legal information and gain perspective on how AI is transforming legal research.

Legal Scholars
& Faculty

Examine the relationship between technology, legal institutions, and the rule of law across history.

Historians &
Information Scientists

Discover how changing information technologies shaped governments, societies, and legal systems over time.

AI & Legal
Technology Professionals

Understand today's AI revolution through historical examples of technological change that reshaped legal authority.

About the Authors

Paul D. Callister

Paul D. Callister is a Professor of Law and former Director of the Leon E. Bloch Law Library at the University of Missouri-Kansas City for the last twenty-three years whose scholarship focuses on how information environments shape law and legal institutions. Professor Callister is a frequent speaker on artificial intelligence, and teaches courses on Copyright, Advanced Legal Research, and AI and the Law.

Dana Neacsu

Dana Neacsu, a Political Science Lecturer at Columbia University, New York attorney, and since October 2025, the Chief Law Librarian at the NYC Law Department, previously served as the Director of the Duquesne Center for Legal Information/Assistant Professor of Legal Skills (2021–2025) and as a Librarian & Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School (2000–2021). A critical legal scholar, Dr. Neacsu’s most recent books, The Bourgeois Charm of Karl Marx and Socialism: The 100-Year-Old Misnomer, focus on meaning making and knowledge production.