In 1968, the first seminar on Electronic Data Processing and Law was held at Stockholm University. Later that year The Working Party for EDP and Law was established. The topic soon became part of the legal curricula and a meeting point for scholars and professionals with background in information science and law.


Already from the beginning, the interest was of an interdisciplinary kind. Computers as potential tools for assisting legal work as well as new regulatory issues attracted the attention and many pilot studies and research projects were initiated. In 1981, the Working Party was reorganised into The Swedish Law and Informatics Research Institute (IRI) and soon after the first academic chair in Law and IT (Rättsinformatik/Legal Informatics) was announced.

IRI’s background is closely related to the developments in the other Nordic countries and this volume presents 24 articles written by Scandinavian authors contributing their expertise on specific topics related to Law and IT. The result is a book that highlights many of the recent issues that have come to the fore with the increased use of IT in society, and in several cases indicates alternative ways of addressing these.

The series Scandinavian Studies in Law is published by a non-profit trust. The first volume was presented in 1957 and to date some 900 articles have been published in the series.