Lawyers as Constructive Ideologists of Corporate Capitalism: The Legal Framing of Software

Abstract

The study of law as a social process should combine an analysis of structures from a political economy perspective with a sociological focus on the practices of lawyering in mediating social relations and conflicts through the formulation and interpretation of legal texts. This approach is applied here to software, which has become the oxygen of the world economy, powering the digitalisation that has transformed economic activities and social life. The forms this has taken have been moulded by lawyers, battling over intellectual property rights in computer programs, enshrining them in national law and international standards, as well as devising the international tax avoidance strategies that have helped propel the giant digital-tech transnational corporations to global dominance. These contests have taken place through processes of formulation and interpretation of the legal concepts that both reflect and shape social struggles over economic and political power, mediated by law, in contemporary corporate capitalism.