Law and Complexity

Complexity science is a multi-disciplinary field that studies systems comprised of numerous interacting components. The human social network, the internet, social media applications, cities, biological systems and financial networks are all examples of complex systems. Moreover, the law itself is a complex system, with many components, such as court cases, pieces of legislation, and academic papers. Complexity can lead to non-linear and surprising responses to policy initiatives, such as tipping points and feedback effects. Policymaking that is insensitive to these possibilities can go drastically awry.

Concepts from complexity science thus have the potential to provide important insights for law and policy but are so far under-studied and under-utilized by lawyers and policymakers.

At the Information Law Institute, we are pioneering research at the interface of law and complexity. We apply the methods and tools of complexity science, including agent based modeling, network science, and dynamic systems analysis, to the design of specific legal rules and general legal policies. This work has applications in areas such as innovation, racial segregation, network economics, commons governance, the legal system, public health and epidemics, and adaptive regulatory design.

 

Selected Research

• Noam Kolt, Michal Shur-Ofry, and Reuven Cohen, Lessons from complex systems science for AI governance, 6 Patterns Aug. 8 2025 (link).
• Michal Shur-Ofry, Bar Horowitz-Amsalem, Adir Rahamim, and Yonatan Belinkov, "Growing a Tail: Increasing Output Diversity in Large Language Models," arXiv:2411.02989 (2024) (link).
• Michal Shur-Ofry, A Networks-of-Networks Perspective on AI policy, 2024 Network L. Rev. 212 (link).
• Michal Shur-Ofry, Law and Complexity: An Introduction (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press), available at SSRN 5020103 (2024) (link).
• Sebastian Benthall, Erez Hatna, Joshua M. Epstein, and Katherine J. Strandburg, Privacy and Contact Tracing Efficacy, 19 J. R. Soc. Interface, Sept. 21 2022 (link).
• Sebastian Benthall, Michael Carl Tschantz, Erez Hatna, Joshua M. Epstein, and Katherine J. Strandburg, At the Boundary of Law and Software: Toward Regulatory Design with Agent-Based Modeling, In AMPM@ JURIX. (2021) (link).