ABSTRACT
This chapter formulates a theoretical framework for evaluating the implications that digital technologies have for the legal system and applies this to dispute resolution. It focuses on the privatisation of dispute resolution through digital technologies. The chapter demonstrates how the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) creates new possibilities for privatisation of enforcement and how this development, in turn, affects the underlying methods of justifying dispute resolution in the first place. It briefly describes different areas where dispute resolution and technology overlap. The chapter describes seven examples of encouraging – or forcing – compliance in private and public models of dispute resolution and provides an overview of different forms of enforcement and elaborate on how new technology-driven forms of forcing compliance overlap, cooperate and challenge the old ones. It discusses the agency of technology in the spirit of Friedrich Kittler's work on media theory.
