Open Access

Vytautas Čyras, Friedrich Lachmayer

• This paper expands on the concept of legal machine which was presented first at IRIS 2011 in Salzburg. The research subjects are (1) the creation of institutional facts by machines, and (2) multimodal communication of legal content to humans. Simple examples are traffic lights and vending machines. Complicated examples are computer-based information systems in organisations, form proceedings workflows, and machines which replace officials in organisations. The actions performed by machines have legal importance and draw legal consequences. Machines similarly as humans can be imposed status-functions of legal actors. The analogy of machines with humans is in the focus of this paper. Legal content can be communicated by machines and can be perceived by all of our senses. The content can be expressed in multimodal languages: textual, visual, acoustic, gestures, aircraft manoeuvres, etc. The concept of encapsulatation of human into machine is proposed. Herein humanintended actions are communicated through the machine’s output channel. Encapsulations can be compared with deities and mythical creatures that can send gods’ messages to people through the human mouth. This paper also aims to identify law production patterns by machines.