ABSTRACT
Yet it is that breadth of interaction with other academic legal domains that makes the subject such an involving and vibrant arena in which to participate. It has not been unusual for IT law to be the proving ground for developing jurisprudential thought on issues not yet suffi ciently mainstream to merit a place within more established subject areas. Indeed, within university law courses, such issues often migrate between the IT curriculum and more familiar surroundings. For example, in the early to mid-1990s, the question of the admissibility of computer-generated evidence in criminal and civil cases exercised IT lawyers, as the courts struggled to come to terms with the application of the common law (for example, the hearsay rule) and legislation (for example, s 69 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 ). 1 By 2000, the issue was largely of historical interest to IT lawyers, as the passage of the Civil Evidence Act 1995 and repeal of s 69 PACE respectively clarifi ed the civil and criminal law perspectives, and computer-generated evidence once again returned to the fold of traditional evidence law courses. A similar trajectory may perhaps be traced in time with issues such as internet jurisdiction and digital copyright.
