SABB: Rethinking Legal Epistemology: Law and Technology in Bangladesh, Salwa Tabassum Hoque

South Asia Brown Bag Fall 2020
Rethinking Legal Epistemology: Law and Technology in Bangladesh.
Salwa Tabassum Hoque (New York University, Media, Culture, and Communication)
Contact southasiabrownbag@yale.edu to receive the registration information and the ZOOM link.
Law is a crucial aspect of people’s lives not only because it outlines concepts of justice and criminality but also since it determines the norms and boundaries of what is acceptable in society. With the rise of technological innovation, legal professionals use digital legal research programs to look up judicial doctrine such as statutes and ordinances as well as previous cases from the Supreme Court and High Court that are stored in its database. While some argue that such programs make the legal research process faster and more efficient, others worry about algorithmic bias in influencing the legal narrative and decision-making process. This paper analyzes digital legal research programs such as Sofist, Manupatra, and Bdlex to explore how algorithmic governance reshapes legal norms and epistemology. I explore this issue by focusing on the practices of state court, semi-state village court, and non-state shalish proceeding in Bangladesh. State courts are considered secular and the latter two operate mostly using Islamic customs and philosophies. The dominant assumption is that using these algorithmic technologies align with secular and modern practices that are more objective and “better” than the backwards Islamic practices in the villages. This paper problematizes this view; I analyze the construction of digital legal database and the search engine in order to demonstrate how algorithmic technologies exclude, distort, and erase the histories and social realities of subaltern lives. The point is not to reinforce religion/secularism and urban/rural binaries but rather to show the complex interaction and power dynamic of these courts.