ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the next subsequent chapter. The part deals with the use of knowledge in the legal system and the relation between scientific expertise and legal decisions. It focuses on the experience of the German legal system. The part explains the relations between information, knowledge and the legal system when it focuses on the evolution of the Internet and the "innovation commons." It shows that the extraordinary innovations brought about by and for the Internet are based, last but not least, on the presence of core resources of the Internet on the "commons" of the Internet. The part examines the issue of governance of scientific knowledge in a comparative perspective. It argues that differences in national administrative traditions in particular have led to different models of the governance of knowledge in liberal democracies.
