CRIMINAL LAW AND TECHNOLOGICAL MODERNITY: A JURISPRUDENTIAL REORIENTATION

Abstract

The rapid entrenchment of digital technologies—including artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, algorithmic governance, and data-intensive infrastructures—has generated profound tensions within the foundational architecture of criminal law. Central to this disruption is the doctrine of mens rea, which has historically served as the normative anchor for individual blameworthiness and the moral legitimacy of punishment. Contemporary technologically mediated harms, however, increasingly arise from diffuse, opaque, and system-driven forms of decision-making that elude traditional fault-based analysis. This chapter contends that the classical anthropocentric conception of criminal culpability is no longer sufficient to account for the realities of technological modernity. It advances a jurisprudential reorientation from mens rea to machine rea, not as a displacement of human responsibility, but as an analytical framework capable of capturing distributed agency, institutional design choices, and systemic risk production embedded within automated systems. By reconceptualizing culpability as relational and multi-layered, the chapter develops a pluralistic model that integrates individual intent, organizational responsibility, and governance-based duties of care.