A tenured research professor on ‘Interfacing Law and Technology’ at the University of Brussels, Mireille Hildebrandt‘s research focuses on the implications of automated decisions, machine learning and mindless artificial agency, notably concerning the implications for law and the rule of law in constitutional democracies. Working on the cusp of law and computer science is core to her research.

At the University of Brussels (VUB), Professor Hildebrandt works with the research group on Law Science Technology and Society Studies (LSTS) at the Faculty of law and Criminology. She also holds the part-time Chair of ‘Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law’ at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) of the Science Faculty of Radboud University Nijmegen since 2011.

She has published 4 scientific monographs, 22 edited volumes or special issues, and over 100 chapters and articles in scientific journals and volumes. See notably her Smart Environments and the End(s) of Law. Novel Entanglements of Law and Technologies.

In 2018 Hildebrandt has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for research on ‘Counting as a Human Being in Computational Law’ (COHUBICOL), on the cusp of law and computer science, philosophy of law and philosophy of technology. The project will run from 2019-2014 at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (law), partnered with Radboud University (computer science).

CoHuBiCoL is focused on foundational research into two types of computational law or ‘legal tech’:

• the use of machine learning for argumentation mining and quantified legal prediction, and
• the use of blockchain to develop self-executing code for regulation and contracts (‘smart regulation’, ‘smart contracts’).