Sociology of Law for Human-Robot Interaction

Much foundational work in Sociology of Law (SoL) has considered the role of law in society as well as the role of society in law. This duality has opened for nuanced accounts of the impact of formal law (referred as legal norms herein) by empirically studying formal laws and everyday interactions making up various social norms which may at times align with one another or be in conflict. Recently, technological elements, as part of social structures, have been addressed in terms of socio-legal relevancy of digitalisation (Hydén [2022]) and artificial intelligence (AI) (Larsson [2019]) and formal law. In this entry, we address a specific subset of technologies in need of more socio-legal scrutiny as this phenomenon is likely to be of greater importance in the near future: social robots.