Back to Syllabus for the Law of E-Government and E-Democracy

Governments worldwide are investing billions in the creation of "electronic government" to deliver information and services, including justice, to citizens.  At the same time, citizens engage in new forms of political activism, organizing and civic engagement on-line and use technology to prepare for democratic activity off-line.  Interactive technology is revolutionizing government and has the potential to allow citzens to participate to a greater degree than ever before in decision and policymaking.

In order to use technology to promote democracy, we need a better understanding of the challenges e-government and e-democracy pose to our political and legal institutions. How should on-line voting work?  Who should have access to on-line public records and how? What are the possibilities for on-line deliberation and decisionmaking?  What are the implications of conducting trials and providing court records on-line?  Answers to these questions demand a knowledge of how technology and law work together to regulate human behavior.

This course examines the theory, law and policy of electronic government and electronic democracy.  We will study the new federal laws on e-government and on information access.  This course also examines the social and political effects of the use of technology in legal and political processes.  

Working in small project teams, the class will apply its understanding of the theoretical issues studied during the first half of the class to the design of a new system for citizen consultation in municipal school board budgeting (for a description of the problem, see demos.com and voxpopuli)  Teams will work in on-line collaboration with the Heinz School of Business and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Course Requirements:

Students will be expected to read and participate actively in class and participate in on-line sections with Carnegie Mellon.  Each student will be expected once during the semester to present a 5-minute "deconstruct" of the democratic implications of a particular website or technology and to post those comments to the class Web Site.  Class grades are 50% project participation and 50% class participation.