[author]Li Xueyao

[content]

Beyond the “Law of the Horse” paradox in Jurisprudence: A Re-reflection on the Reflection of Digital Jurisprudence

Li Xueyao

Professor, Koguan School of Law, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, PhD in Law

Abstract: Coherentism, reformism, and integrationism constitute the three main theoretical approaches presented by contemporary Chinese jurisprudence in the face of the challenges of digitalization. A reflective analysis of Coherentism reveals that a dual stance—combining both practical adaptability and theoretical openness toward the future—is most desirable. Faced with the exponential iteration of digital technology, coherentism emphasizes the stability and systematic self-consistency of traditional legal theory; reformism advocates for partial amendments and functional adjustments while maintaining the traditional structure of jurisprudence; and integrationism employs a technology-driven logic in an attempt to promote a systemic and structural paradigm shift in jurisprudence. From both theoretical and policy perspectives, digital jurisprudence should adopt a path of prudent transition to avoid the disruption of the existing legal order by premature conceptual leaps. Against this backdrop, the intellectual construction of digital jurisprudence should adhere to a theoretical positioning of "coherence as the foundation, reform as the path, and integration as the potential." This will preserve sufficient institutional flexibility and cognitive space for the evolution of future legal paradigms while ensuring the stability of the normative foundation of jurisprudence.

Keywords: Digital Jurisprudence; Reflection on Reflection; Coherentism; Reformism; Integrationism

Behind the clamor for the institutionalization of digital jurisprudence, a vigorous and oppositional discussion has emerged. The academic community is engaged in a fierce debate surrounding the disciplinary name of digital jurisprudence, the autonomy of its departmental law (its theoretical systematicity), its methodological autonomy, and the existence of an "academic bubble" phenomenon. Due to a severe lack of consensus, the practical paths for the institutionalization of digital jurisprudence have also been varied and divergent. To better clarify the impact of technological innovation on legal practice and its theory, it remains necessary to conduct an in-depth exploration of the aforementioned issues at the academic level. For the purpose of smoothly carrying out this academic inquiry, this article adopts a "non-foundationalist" definitional method, incorporating all legal concepts and research content related to digital technology into the scope of digital jurisprudence. Previously, I have categorized the types of digital jurisprudence theory as rights-based, regulatory-based, and computational law-based. The main purpose of this theoretical operation was to facilitate reader comprehension, adopting a literature-review-oriented approach. Here, based on the need for academic debate to "set a target," the existing types of digital jurisprudence theory are further divided into Coherentism (conservatism), reformism, and integrationism (revolutionism). On this basis, a composite position of "future-integrationism" and "present-day-reformism" is used to engage in a discussion with the Coherentism that has distinct reflective characteristics and frequently cites the “The Law of the Horse Debate”. To achieve a better effect in the theoretical debate, this article will select academic works that conform to the consistency characteristics of analytical jurisprudence as representatives of Coherentism.

1. Theoretical Analytical Framework: Three Types of Jurisprudential Theory

In the academic debate concerning digital jurisprudence, the divergence of views depends on one's attitude towards the relationship between law and frontier technology, that is, it relies on the answer to two questions: What kind of impact does frontier technology have on the law, and how does (or should) the law respond? How does (or should) the law affect frontier technology? Regarding the impact of digital technology on jurisprudence or the disciplinary nature of digital jurisprudence, three main viewpoints can be identified: Coherentism, reformism, and integrationism. Among them, the proponents of Coherentism and reformism basically rely on the language of rights, with their main difference lying in their degree of tolerance for new rights (especially personality rights and digital rights) and whether they strictly adhere to the public-private law dichotomy. Integrationists generally have rich interdisciplinary learning experiences and were originally engaged in research on the relationship between law and frontier technology, with topics covering intelligent justice, biomedical law, legal information retrieval, and law and social theory.

First, Coherentism. Scholars who hold to the self-consistency-ist approach are mainly legal theorists with an inclination towards analytical jurisprudence and departmental law scholars who strictly adhere to the methods of legal dogmatics. The basic assertion of Coherentism is that, in the face of the challenge of digital technology, the traditional system of legal theory maintains its self-consistency (stability). The changes that follow are "merely perfections and adjustments within the radiating scope of the core of the legal system... the legal system is stable because of its inherent core of 'rights'." Regarding the concept of digital jurisprudence and its academic institutionalization, Coherentism mostly adopts two attitudes. One is a stance of "non-comment," which is to adopt a “Law of the Horse” theory to respond to the proposals of digital jurisprudence and digital rule of law. The basic line of questioning is that the naming rationale and discipline construction approach of digital jurisprudence is somewhat like "steam engine law," "electricity law," or "train law," which is "logically very bizarre." The second is that if one must take a public stance on the concept and institutional path of digital jurisprudence, a problem-oriented, domain-law approach is adopted for response. Specifically, there are three theoretical propositions: self-consistency of the rights system, self-consistency of the theoretical system, and self-consistency of the legal normative method (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Main Theoretical Propositions of Coherentism

Second, reformism. The different line of thinking between reformism and Coherentism is mainly manifested in two aspects. (1) The revision of established legal theories. Taking rights theory as an example, in addition to establishing new rights, it also includes discussions on whether the subject of rights can be extended from traditional natural and legal persons to artificial intelligence, and whether "relational rights" types that transcend the perspective of property rights can be constructed. Discussions beyond rights theory also cover theories of the rule of law, justice, power, and procedure, proposing theoretical concepts in the reformist sense such as digital rule of law, digital justice, digital power, digital human rights, and technological due process. (2) The adjustment approach for the legal system (mainly the blurring of the public-private law dichotomy). For example, the Civil Code contains articles of a public regulatory nature, the enacted Personal Information Protection Law has a nature of publicizing private law, and there is a push to formulate a systematic "Artificial Intelligence Law." The common ground between reformism and Coherentism is that they still consider legal methodology to be self-consistent and primarily conduct research within the framework of traditional legal theories such as rights theory and procedural theory, even leaning towards adopting a domain-law approach for academic institutionalization. Supporters of this theoretical camp mainly fall into three categories. The first are scholars engaged in the study of an autonomous Chinese system of legal theory, with legal theorists being the majority. The second are departmental law scholars from fields like civil law, administrative law, criminal law, and constitutional law who possess a "six-law" system-based self-identity with legal dogmatics. The main difference here between reformism and Coherentism is whether they recognize new rights such as personality rights and personal information rights, or the multiple attributes of related rights; and whether they adopt a relaxed attitude towards the departmental law boundaries of the public-private law dichotomy, that is, whether they approve of the "publicization of private law" or the "privatization of public law." The third are scholars from "evolutionary" legal departments such as economic law, commercial law, and intellectual property law. Scholars in these departments who are engaged in research on algorithm regulation, data regulation, platform regulation, and artificial intelligence regulation often follow a pragmatic approach and basically belong to the reformist camp.

Third, integrationism. The main intellectual sources of integrationist theory are twofold: one is theoretical jurisprudence with broad interdisciplinary needs; the other is litigation law, which accepts quantitative research methods, and departmental law that treats the regulation of frontier technology as its research object. Its approaches can be further divided into two categories. First, holding a utilitarian view, starting from empirical legal research and following the path of computational social science. On the basis of quantitative research in economics, sociology, etc., it moves in the direction of "researching normative issues through computational methods," attempting to construct jurisprudence as a formal system that transcends natural language representation. This can be summarized as "computational jurisprudence." Second, holding a deontological view, following the path of normative jurisprudence. Based on the characteristics or nature of digital society, it uses innovative conceptual restatements (such as digital rule of law, digital human rights, and digital justice) and their re-systematization to attempt to construct a new system of legal theory in the sense of a paradigm revolution. This can be summarized as "digital legal theory."

2. The Basic Tenets of Coherentism

2.1 Points of Contention: Methodological Iteration, Legal System Reconstruction, and Rights System Transformation

When discussing disciplinary independence, the standards of measurement for jurisprudence and other disciplines are quite different. Apart from the independence and autonomy of research methods and theoretical tools, departmental law often takes the systematization of substantive law (including legal subjects, types of rights, and content of acts) and the typification of procedural elements as the prerequisites for disciplinarization. When demonstrating the legitimacy of their disciplinary independence, specific legal research fields such as economic law, environmental and resource law, and even "social governance law," "sports law," "cultural law," and "education law" generally focus on three elements: (1) the uniqueness of the research method; (2) the systematic self-consistency of the substantive legal system or theoretical system; and (3) the ability to constitute an independent and classifiable right (such as the right to education).

Proponents of the concept of digital jurisprudence also usually adopt a path of theoretically reorganizing the above three elements to legitimize digital jurisprudence. Among them, reformism adopts a combined approach of the second and third elements, while integrationism often combines all three elements. For example, the related research approach of the reformist camp is often: on the one hand, to discuss the challenges of digital technology to the self-consistency of the legal system and its responses from the perspective of legal relations; on the other hand, to continuously legitimize new rights emerging from digital technology, such as the right to portability and the right to be forgotten. A representative view of integrationism, especially "digital legal theory," has a primary approach: first, it summarizes the evolutionary path of digital jurisprudence into three stages—"methodology," "epistemology," and "ontology"—and comprehensively elaborates on the ability of "digital jurisprudence" to replace mainstream legal dogmatic methods, identifying its nature as a "paradigm revolution"; second, it holds that specific legal concepts, principles, and rules will all face systematic reconstruction, and provides a systematic and brand-new exposition of the relatively more important concepts such as digital human rights, digital rule of law, and digital justice, comprehensively detailing how digital jurisprudence transcends the dualistic thinking of traditional jurisprudence.

2.2 Overall Viewpoint: No Replacement, No Challenge, and No Legitimation

To better focus the discussion, this article takes "Digital Jurisprudence and the Division of Departmental Law: An Old Question Revisited?" (by Chen Jinghui, hereinafter referred to as "Digital Jurisprudence and Departmental Division"), "Transcending the Either/Or Dilemma: A Re-reflection on the Positioning of Digital Jurisprudence" (by Lei Lei, hereinafter referred to as "Re-reflection on Positioning Digital Jurisprudence"), and "A Further Inquiry into the Disciplinary Positioning of Digital Jurisprudence" (by Lei Lei and Sun Guanhao) as academic representatives of Coherentism and objects of discussion. On this basis, it preliminarily establishes the "digital jurisprudence" position of integrationism. Regardless of whether these authors intended it, when they were falsifying or validating digital jurisprudence, they primarily approached it from three aspects: whether it can replace normative methods, whether it can challenge the autonomy of the legal system, and the admissibility of rights theory.

Continuing the author's previous discussions on the response of technology and legal theory, "Digital Jurisprudence and Departmental Division" embodies a stance of "absolute Coherentism." The author's main points in the article are: First, digital jurisprudence aims to challenge the entire framework of jurisprudence, with the ultimate goal of achieving the digitization of all jurisprudence. Second, digitization has not challenged the substantive law system, and therefore there is no problem of challenging legal theory at the level of jurisprudence. Third, in the sense of analytical empiricism, digital jurisprudence, by its nature, can only belong to a specific area of public law, similar to economic law, environmental law, etc. Fourth, in the sense of educational policy, whether digital jurisprudence can be established is unrelated to the "nature of departmental law in the normative sense (or the standard division of legal theory)," but rather depends on the "policy identity" of the legal complex community. It is worth noting that before this article was published, the author had already used conceptual analysis and logical deduction to classify "rule by algorithm" and "rule by code" as "objects of constraint by the rule of law" rather than "a form of the rule of law," thus unequivocally rejecting the digital jurisprudence theory of integrationism. He also unequivocally rejected the digital jurisprudence theory of reformism by opposing any form of new rights.

The author of "Re-reflection on Positioning Digital Jurisprudence," while on the one hand acknowledging in a series of recent discussions on the relationship between law and technological innovation that technological innovation poses a challenge to the law, on the other hand, his views are substantively no different from those of the author of "Digital Jurisprudence and Departmental Division," and he also holds a typically self-consistent line of thought. Although "Re-reflection on Positioning Digital Jurisprudence" acknowledges the representative significance of digital jurisprudence for new legal research thinking, the emergence of new rights (powers), and its necessity as a "teaching subject" in legal education, the article clearly states: (1) digital jurisprudence has not proposed new research methods; (2) in substantive law, the existing digital substantive law has not yet reached the quantitative requirement needed to form an independent department of law. In the article, the author categorizes the existing types of digital jurisprudence theory into a strong version and a weak version and refutes them one by one. His so-called strong version of digital jurisprudence is somewhat similar to the "digital legal theory" of integrationism proposed in this article; the weak version of digital jurisprudence is identical to the reformist thinking mentioned in this article, but its theoretical claims are focused on the "disciplinarization (departmentalization) of digital jurisprudence." Subsequently, "A Further Inquiry into the Disciplinary Positioning of Digital Jurisprudence" reinforced the above views, further proposing that: (1) basic categories of legal research such as "legal subject" and "legal liability" have not been fundamentally impacted; (2) the internal systematization of digital jurisprudence is still incomplete.

2.3 Failure to Form a "New Legal Theory"

Scholars with coherentism have negated the concept of "digital legal theory" within digital jurisprudence research. The line of thought in "Digital Jurisprudence and Departmental Division" for negating "digital legal theory" is that digital jurisprudence does not belong to the traditional category of theoretical jurisprudence. Specifically, on the one hand, it does not primarily study history, so it cannot be classified under legal history; on the other hand, legal theory primarily focuses on the abstract interpretation of law, whereas digital jurisprudence directly undertakes the practical task of solving real-world legal problems. At the same time, although proponents of digital jurisprudence believe that this discipline can subvert the existing substantive law system, in reality, the legal system constituted by the constitution and other departmental laws still possesses extremely strong resilience. It is capable of absorbing and resolving many newly emerging legal challenges (such as extending the object of theft from tangible property to intangible property) without changing existing regulations. Therefore, departmental law does not actually need to respond to the challenges of digital technology through a transformation of legal theory.

As mentioned above, the so-called strong version of digital jurisprudence in "Re-reflection on Positioning Digital Jurisprudence" is essentially "digital legal theory." On the basis of this categorization, the article argues that the main logical problem of the proponents of digital jurisprudence lies in: taking for granted that changes in social forms will inevitably trigger fundamental changes in the legal system; and creating a mechanical one-to-one correspondence between changes in social forms and changes in jurisprudence. The author emphasizes that although digital society has brought profound changes at the technological level, it does not necessarily lead to a fundamental rupture in the structure of jurisprudence. Historical experience shows that during the development from feudal law to capitalist law, the legal system did not experience a paradigmatic interruption; core values of modern rule of law such as liberty, equality, and human rights were sustained and protected through various stages. Based on this, the article further points out that even legal relations that occur in the digital space can, in essence, still be analyzed through the traditional structure of rights and obligations. For example, in civil cases in the digital domain, one can still apply the "basis of the claim" line of thinking to determine the attribution of rights and the judgment of liability. Therefore, this article clearly denies the necessity for digital jurisprudence to propose a new paradigm for legal research, and in fact, it also completely refutes the theoretical claims of "digital legal theory."

2.4 Failure to Form a "New Departmental Law"

Scholars with coherentism generally hold a negative attitude towards whether digital jurisprudence has already developed into an independent departmental law. They do not deny the existence of "digital jurisprudence" as teaching content or a research field, but they uniformly believe that it does not yet possess the theoretical foundation and systemic conditions to be elevated to an independent legal department.

Among them, "Digital Jurisprudence and Departmental Division" represents a relatively resolute negative stance. This article, proceeding from the traditional departmental law division standard of "object of regulation + method of regulation," argues that digital jurisprudence is merely a response to new problems faced by existing departmental laws in a technological environment. It lacks an independent object of regulation and operational logic, and cannot break away from the existing system to become a parallel legal domain. The article emphasizes that the traditional division between public and private law not only has social theory support but also contains differences in value objectives and institutional functions, reflecting the essential distinction between private power and public authority. The formation of emerging departmental laws such as economic law and environmental law also conforms to this division path, proving the posteriori summary rationality of the traditional "object of regulation + method of regulation" division standard. The demand for the "departmentalization" of digital jurisprudence is not comparable, because digital law is merely an applied field for civil law, administrative law, criminal law, constitutional law, and litigation law.

In comparison, "Re-reflection on Positioning Digital Jurisprudence" adopts a strategy of "roundabout negation." On the surface, the article criticizes the former position as conservative, advocating that digital jurisprudence may in the future develop into a new legal domain spanning public and private law, possessing the potential for system construction. However, in substance, the author, starting from the current situation where the substantive rules of "digital law" are still sparse and the normative system has not yet taken shape, believes that it is not yet sufficient to constitute a complete departmental law. That is, this position, under the pretext of "not yet mature," postpones the possibility of digital jurisprudence becoming an independent departmental law at present. The author even denies the interdisciplinary nature of digital jurisprudence in terms of academic methodology, thereby completely negating the disciplinary independence of digital jurisprudence. On this basis, the author advocates for adopting the perspective of domain law to explore and test this new phenomenon of digital jurisprudence, rather than rushing to propose a brand-new legal paradigm.

Overall, although the paths of negation of digital jurisprudence by Scholars with coherentism differ, their final conclusions are consistent: digital jurisprudence currently should not and cannot become a legal discipline parallel to traditional departmental laws. They either completely exclude the independence of digital jurisprudence from the internal classificatory logic of the legal system, or they temporarily exclude it from departmental law using the criteria of rule density and institutional self-sufficiency. Even if some space is left for the study of digital jurisprudence, this "pragmatic acceptance" is merely based on considerations of teaching, practice, or specialized research, which is not yet sufficient to constitute a theoretical commitment to system construction.

3. A Re-reflection on Coherentism

Following the line of thought of the aforementioned scholars with coherentism, the qualitative positioning of digital jurisprudence should focus on the following three core questions: First, does digital jurisprudence constitute a new legal paradigm, meaning, do the theories it advocates truly shake the judgment logic, interpretative paths, and formal system upon which traditional jurisprudence relies? Second, has digital jurisprudence already transcended the dependent construction logic of "domain law" or "departmental law extension," proposing a conceptual system and formal units with categorical autonomy, thereby possessing an independent epistemological foundation for its establishment? Third, in the context of technology challenging the normative structure, does digital jurisprudence have the capacity to rebuild the normative legitimacy of law as a carrier of value and a guide for institutions, avoiding its degradation into an appendage of instrumental rationality and empirical algorithms?

This article's overall response to coherentism is: the development of digital jurisprudence should not be simply seen as an attachment to or rhetorical extension of the existing legal system, but should be understood as a cognitive shift towards structural change. Both the trend of technological systems reconstructing judgment paths and the accumulating interpretive pressure of new legal concepts at the institutional level indicate that the boundaries of applicability of traditional legal methods in the digital context are being redefined. This change does not stem from the unidirectional penetration of technological tools into the application of law, but rather indicates that the production mechanism of normativity itself is facing a fundamental reconstruction.

To elaborate further, although digital jurisprudence has not yet, in an analytical sense, completely overturned the methodological autonomy and rights structure of traditional legal dogmatics, it does not have a "zero-sum" relationship of "you die, I live" with mainstream jurisprudence. A more reasonable analogy is that digital jurisprudence in practice exhibits a development path similar to "machine translation gradually replacing human translation": it demonstrates higher efficiency and stronger scalability in specific scenarios, thereby gradually compressing the application space of traditional jurisprudence, which has textual interpretation at its core. This compression is not a one-time replacement, but a gradual structural erosion. At the same time, some fundamental normative concepts centered on value judgments (such as proportionality, presumption of innocence, discretion, due process, and rights-orientation) have also begun to be re-encoded, or even falsified or marginalized, under the logic of algorithmic prediction and system optimization. For example, in algorithmic risk control systems, risk level prediction models often automatically recommend intervention measures based on statistical correlations, regression weights, and other optimization methods. These measures may not have undergone normative analysis for proportionality but are designed with the objective function of "maximum control at minimum cost." In summary, although traditional legal dogmatics is still in operation, its paradigmatic status is gradually giving way to a judgment mechanism that is technology-driven and model-generated. Against this backdrop, the relationship between digital jurisprudence and traditional jurisprudence is more like the generational succession of the "Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties" in ancient China: though not a complete rupture, there is evolution; though there is inheritance, they are not identical.

In this process, reformism, through partial amendments and systemic fine-tuning, has provided a path of adaptive extension for the traditional legal structure. Meanwhile, integrationism, through sufficient imagination and continuous trial-and-error, has further proposed a vision for the comprehensive transformation of institutional categories, judgment logic, and semantic forms, which may, based on the accessibility of current information technology, successfully construct a brand-new legal paradigm with formal logic, judgment models, and semantic self-consistency. The common premise of these two paths is the acknowledgment that digitalization is no longer merely an external environmental variable for jurisprudence, but is gradually becoming an endogenous driving force for the evolution of legal concepts and theoretical structures.

3.1 The Necessity of a Reformist Stance Based on Digital Practice

Compared to coherentism, reformism does not deny the self-consistent foundation of existing legal theory, but rather emphasizes the need for limited but necessary adjustments to the existing rights structure, liability attribution logic, and normative application paths in the digital context. The proposal of this adaptive stance is a response to the technological impacts that have already become apparent in current legal events. In fact, whether it is the various auxiliary judicial systems in judicial practice, the data governance logic in administrative regulation, or the rapid expansion of interdisciplinary content in legal education (such as the burgeoning use of AI for legal education), traditional legal theory is facing ever-increasing adaptive pressure.

The possible enlightenment from the “Law of the Horse” debate is when encountering new technological challenges, legal scholars should avoid always thinking of "blazing a new trail" and should "prioritize taking the familiar road"; they should adopt a prudent attitude and avoid chasing trends and infinitely exaggerating the impact that "digitalization" has already had on legal theory and practice. In this, it must be admitted that as a social phenomenon and a legal norm object, although digitalization has brought challenges to contemporary jurisprudence and legal practice such as data rights confirmation and distribution, rights division for AI-generated images, and the balance between AI safety and innovation, at this current point in time, these problems can indeed still be addressed using mainstream departmental law theoretical systems and legal practices. If one summarizes the existing legal research literature on AI technology and data, one may find that the so-called theoretical difficulties are often old-wine-in-new-bottles issues, such as whether a systematic philosophical jurisprudence is possible, and whether the preference for codification hinders technological innovation. In short, the so-called theoretical problems of "digital jurisprudence" can largely be reduced to related academic debates in legal history and resolved using existing legal theories.

However, one cannot arbitrarily draw the conservative conclusion of coherentism just because "new wine can be put in old bottles," without examining whether "putting new wine in old bottles affects the quality of the wine" or whether "there are new bottles better suited for the new wine." Through comparative legal research among countries and regions like China, the US, and Europe, it is evident that at present, the only viable legal approach to effectively respond to the challenges of digitalization is reformism, not coherentism. In short, as a practical path to respond to the impact of digital technology, reformism does not attempt to subvert the existing legal paradigm, but rather, on the premise of upholding the traditional structure, it carries out partial loosening and functional adjustments to the threefold structure on which "coherentism" relies, through interpretative expansion and mechanism superposition.

First, in terms of the self-consistency of the rights system, digital technology has given rise to a large number of "quasi-right phenomena" that are not fully covered by existing normative types, including data use rights, the right to algorithmic explanation, the right to be forgotten, and the right to information correction. While these claims of rights have not completely broken away from the traditional tripartite structure of "personality rights—property rights—political rights," they exhibit stronger contextual dependence and factual generation in practice. Especially in terms of the structure of legal subjects, the human-like interactive roles played by artificial intelligence and platform algorithms have caused the traditional "natural person—legal person" binary division to become increasingly blurred, leading to a large number of "quasi-subjects" existing in a gray area of institutional limbo. Although the discussion around whether artificial intelligence has the status of a legal subject has been heated in international academic circles, two types of problem scenarios should be clearly distinguished: one is to view artificial intelligence as "human-like" and explore whether it possesses free will or moral judgment capabilities, which involves interdisciplinary issues like neuroscience and anti-reductionism, clearly exceeding the capacity of traditional legal dogmatics, which is "folk psychology" in nature; the second is to draw on historical experiences of legal fictions like corporations, to fictionally constitute artificial intelligence as a special subject, and thereby unfold the institutional construction of limited rights and liability capacity. In the latter path, the reformist approach may provide a technology-responsive path guided by functional effectiveness, capable of making appropriate revisions to the "subject closure assumption" within legal dogmatics.

Second, in terms of the structural autonomy of the legal system, in order to respond to the governance and institutional practice brought by new technologies, changes, reformist theory often provides a positive response to various new types of governance mechanisms. On the one hand, it fine-tunes and reorganizes the binary structural arrangements in the traditional rule system, such as "substance and procedure" and "norms and discretion." On the other hand, at the institutional framework level, it continuously "legalizes" normative systems such as standards, lists, ethics, and corporate compliance through various means. With the deep integration of algorithmic models and prediction systems in adjudication and law enforcement, the "normative interpretation—discretionary application" model on which legal dogmatics relies is seeing its application space significantly compressed. Although criticism at the normative level emphasizes that algorithmic modeling may solidify "historical injustice," thereby weakening the openness and just path of legal judgment, at the empirical level, the accumulation of large-scale data and the development of modeling technology have made the role of predictive tools in judicial and administrative practice increasingly structural, presenting an irresistible trend. On the one hand, technological systems have not only reshaped judgment methods like judicial adjudication but have also, in fact, changed the generation mechanisms of various discretionary spaces. On the other hand, state and social organizations are increasingly relying on digital tools to achieve refined governance, and the principles of unity and universality that the traditional legal system relies upon are being continuously eroded by the logic of variability and differentiation.

Third, in terms of the self-consistency of normative methodology, the methodological challenge faced by coherentism is concentrated in the gradual systematization and potential for institutionalization of legal-technological knowledge. As new technological scenarios such as data governance and algorithmic regulation enter legal practice and academic discourse, the knowledge structure of legal interpretation methods is undergoing profound changes. On the one hand, the interdisciplinary research of law and artificial intelligence has already taken on the characteristics of a "quasi-departmental law." In addition to the continuous systematization of theory, increasingly widespread social applications, and strong societal demand for talent cultivation, its teaching practice is also becoming normalized, with specialized courses, research institutions, and textbook systems having been formed in several universities. On the other hand, generative large models and other technologies that break through the logic of traditional language are substantively affecting the epistemological foundation of legal interpretation. If the application of large models in the judicial and administrative enforcement domains accelerates further, the paths by which judges, administrative agencies, and even the general public understand legal norms will gradually become embedded in machine-assisted semantic generation and text-matching mechanisms. This change is not only at the tool level but will also challenge the "source structure" of interpretive rationality.

It needs to be pointed out that although current research in "legal technology" and "law and artificial intelligence" often takes computational social science as its knowledge background and tends to approach from a perspective of technological adaptation, its significance for legal methodology cannot be ignored. As early as the mid-to-late 20th century, German legal theory had already incorporated legal informatics into the research scope of legal philosophy, and related explorations also appeared in China in the late 1980s. Therefore, the function of reformism in this dimension is not to completely revolutionize the normative method itself, but rather through the expansion of the knowledge input structure, the negotiation of interpretive authority boundaries, and the technological reconstruction of methodological legitimacy, to bring about a factual loosening of the closed assumptions of the normative method. This trend forces coherentism to confront the triple challenge from disciplinary institutionalization, technological practice, and paradigm shifts, and its theoretical response is far from forming an effective self-consistency.

Based on a pragmatic stance, "present-day reformism" advocates for effectively responding to the structural shocks brought by digital technology through gradual amendments and local adaptations, while firmly upholding the self-consistency and systematicity of traditional jurisprudence. These shocks do not appear in the form of fierce institutional subversion, but rather through multiple logics such as efficiency improvement, expanded coverage, and structural optimization, they gradually erode the application space of traditional legal discourse, creating sustained pressure on the existing legal structure. Reformism, while acknowledging the fundamental stability of the traditional legal system, emphasizes that sufficient space for adaptation and structural flexibility must be reserved for the institution to respond to emerging challenges. Based on this consideration, this article proposes two key institutional design paths.

First, the resilient design of the legal fringe structure. The so-called "fringe structure" refers to institutional mechanisms that are formally flexible and functionally used to buffer the impact of uncertainty. Such mechanisms can be broadly divided into three categories: (1) Flexible normative mechanisms, such as exemption clauses and authorizing rules, which create room for institutional response through non-rigid expressions; (2) Procedural flexibility mechanisms, such as filing in lieu of licensing, flexible procedural arrangements, and ethical review systems, which emphasize enhancing flexibility in procedural steps and introducing negotiation mechanisms to adapt to the uncertain pace of technological development; (3) Structural adjustment tools, such as negative lists, algorithm lists, and risk classification tables, which use modular methods to construct a responsive institutional framework that can be updated and configured. These mechanisms together constitute an important resilient support for the legal system to cope with rapid technological evolution.

Second, the interactive design of technology and institutions from a functionalist perspective. This path emphasizes the institutional embedding of specific technical means (such as cognitive intervention mechanisms, algorithmic access control devices, etc.) to actively strengthen the application basis of core legal values. Its core objective is to prevent fundamental principles such as procedural justice and the presumption of innocence from being weakened, replaced, or marginalized under the impetus of technological logic, ensuring that the legal system maintains its normativity and legitimacy while adapting to technological changes.

At this stage, we hope to build reformism into a form of "dynamic conservatism (Coherentism)": through continuous structural fine-tuning and endogenous repair, traditional jurisprudence can not only maintain its normative subject status but also reserve a practical foundation and categorical buffer for the theoretical leap of integrationism. In this sense, reformism is neither a simple appendage of technological optimism nor a stubborn resistance of formalism, but rather seeks a balance point between institutional evolution and theoretical renewal. It does not reject the reconstruction of future paradigms, but it opposes the hasty negation of the normative value of traditional jurisprudence before a self-consistent structure has been established.

Thus, to avoid impacting the existing system of secondary disciplines in jurisprudence, one can draw on the experience of the institutionalization of educational technology as a discipline, and independently establish "Internet and Information Law" as a secondary discipline to accommodate intelligent justice, intelligent governance, and platform governance, etc.; it is also possible to establish a tertiary direction within litigation law or administrative law, or even directly embed it into an artificial intelligence college to form an interdisciplinary institutional mechanism. This is both a path for the gradual improvement of the theoretical system and a practical solution for the disciplinary governance structure to respond to the challenge of technology.

3.2 The Possibility of Integrationism Based on Technological Affordability

Compared to reformism, the theoretical claims of integrationism are relatively radical. Its representative scholars propose that digital jurisprudence is not an appendage of departmental law or a secondary discipline, but should be seen as a precursor to a paradigm shift, and may even constitute a replacement for the new generation of "general theory of law." Different from reformism, which mainly responds to the local frictions in the current operation of the system, integrationism is dedicated to a comprehensive re-reflection and reconstruction of the basic conceptual system and logical structure of jurisprudence from the dimensions of computability, programmability, and substitutability. Of course, in the course of sharp academic debates, the integrationist camp has also made certain theoretical revisions. For example, representative integrationist scholars have proposed the revised view that "digital jurisprudence in the sense of a paradigm shift is indeed a future phenomenon, but one that will happen very soon." This article attempts to provide a reinforcing argument for it from the perspective of integrating "computational digital jurisprudence" and "digital legal theory": whether the impact of big data technology and intelligent technology on jurisprudence will reach a "legal singularity" is a conclusion that cannot yet be definitively drawn, but current natural sciences possess the technological affordability to better solve traditional normative problems or replace parts of normative research. Two examples are briefly given here to illustrate.

First, big data and intelligent technology's reshaping of the "classification and grading" mechanism in law reflects a leap in the law's capacity for refinement. A crucial mechanism for upholding social justice, efficiency, and diversity in the current legal system is classification and grading. In civil and criminal law, this is manifested in the classification and grading of capacity to act and assumption of responsibility, the logic behind which is a system design of typified presumptions. For example, civil law divides civil capacity to act into full civil capacity, no civil capacity, and limited civil capacity; criminal law makes different divisions of criminal responsibility based on whether the actor is under 14, 16, or 18 years of age. In specific tort liability systems, the duty of care for professionals and ordinary people, as well as for specialized institutions and ordinary legal subjects, is classified differently according to their capacity for care. In safety regulatory systems, such as the biosecurity law and data security law, classification and grading are also important systems.

Although the classification and grading rules in the current substantive law system have achieved institutionalized differential governance to a certain extent, due to the failure to achieve optimal allocation, they often lead to structural contradictions such as the "conflict between universal justice and individual justice" and the "divergence between formal justice and substantive justice." In areas such as safety regulation, the overly crude and static classification and grading systems are often criticized for being a form of "self-comfort," lacking precision in actual risk identification and intervention. To this end, an important direction for institutional optimization is to introduce a refined governance mechanism oriented towards individual differences, that is, based on the specific characteristics of the actor, to implement precise and personalized application of the law. The advancement of such a refinement trend fundamentally depends on the evolution of technology and the enhancement of data capabilities. Historically, the Qin Dynasty's lack of birth date records led it to use height to determine capacity for action; with the development of papermaking, printing, and population registration technology, the standard for dividing capacity for action gradually shifted to age. Entering the information society, technologies such as biometric identification, behavioral trait tracking, and neural response measurement have become increasingly mature, enabling the judgment of legal liability to be more closely aligned with the individual's capacity structure and risk status.

This evolutionary path from typified presumption to personalized identification not only improves the legal system's responsiveness to individual justice but also helps to alleviate the deep-seated tension between formal justice and substantive justice. Supported by real-time data feedback and dynamic model generation mechanisms, the construction of legal rules is gradually breaking free from its reliance on traditional institutional experience, moving towards a dynamic and adaptive system that takes individual differences as a reference and is based on predictive models. Within this framework, the law is demonstrating unprecedented capabilities: attending to the real state of every specific individual, transcending rigid typified assumptions, and moving towards "case-specific justice" in the true sense.

Second, the trend of "factualization" in normative judgment is increasingly prominent, especially manifested in the modelability and computability of moral decision-making mechanisms. A representative case of this trend is the large-scale behavioral and neuroscientific experiments on the ethical dilemma of the "trolley problem." The classic design includes two scenarios: first, in the "track switch" scenario, the operator must choose between sacrificing one person or five people; second, in the "pushing a person to block the trolley" scenario, the bystander must decide whether to personally push one person onto the track to save five. Although the outcome structures of the two are identical, behavioral experiments show significant differences: the former is more likely to elicit a utilitarian response, while the latter often triggers a deontological refusal.

Neuroscience research has found that the two types of judgment activate different regions of the human brain: the track scenario mainly mobilizes the rational areas of the prefrontal cortex, while the platform scenario significantly activates emotional centers such as the amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex. Furthermore, experiments with brain-damaged patients with impaired emotional judgment regions found that they made consistent utilitarian choices in both scenarios. This research reveals a key point: human normative judgment is deeply embedded in a "emotion-cognition" coupled neural structure with a clear physiological mechanism. With the rapid development of brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, the modeling capability of this mechanism is gaining technical support. BCI systems, by reading real-time brainwave activity and neural responses, can not only identify an individual's ethical preferences but may also directly participate in the generation of normative judgments through a "neural-algorithmic coupling mechanism."

This type of research has promoted the modeling of "affective judgment" pathways, enabling artificial intelligence systems to develop decision-making frameworks that are more in line with social expectations on the basis of "simulating human judgment." In this context, the law is no longer merely a system of rules expressed through language, but is also a value system that can be empirically modeled and technologically reproduced. Integrationism is precisely based on this point, launching a paradigm shift from a semantic structure to a functional structure. With the exponential development of generative artificial intelligence and the continuous breakthroughs in the cognitive science research of understanding human intent and cooperative will, the ability of computational social science to interrogate normative questions or reduce them to factual questions is constantly strengthening. The phenomenon of artificial intelligence replacing human judges in certain fields should not be far off. In this changing landscape, the response of jurisprudence should not be limited to a defensive negation, but should focus on conducting a comprehensive discussion and debate from an integrationist perspective on legal methodology, rights theory, liability theory, action theory, and procedural theory.

Based on the discussion of the two preceding types of technological affordability, it can be seen that the integrationist approach of digital jurisprudence is not a vague technological fantasy, but rather an innovative knowledge model that responds to the real needs of legal practice against the backdrop of the continuous evolution of the social structure in the intelligent digital era. Admittedly, the "legal singularity" has not yet arrived, but the normative logic has begun to be shaped by computational logic, and the methodological foundation of jurisprudence is also being gradually rewritten by technological grammar. The greatest theoretical contribution of integrationism may not lie in its already complete new system, but in that it has opened a real entrance to the renewal of the future legal paradigm.

4. The Development of Digital Jurisprudence Beyond "Domain Law"

The institutionalization of digital jurisprudence should certainly respect the existing systematic theoretical achievements of jurisprudence. However, at a time when its theoretical system is still under construction and in dispute, and with the relentless advance of digital transformation as a realistic backdrop, adopting a path that bypasses systemic disputes and focuses on practical problems, especially by introducing "domain law" as an intermediate concept, undoubtedly has significant strategic importance. This path helps to avoid excessive entanglement in academic politics in the short term, while also curbing the tendency towards an "academic bubble" triggered by the hype around technological issues, thereby securing a more stable growth space for the institutionalization of digital jurisprudence. However, it needs to be pointed out that the concept of "domain law" was first proposed by the Chinese tax law academic community, with its original intention being to break free from the dualistic division of public and private law, as well as the theoretical constraints that the traditional departmental law framework imposed on tax law research. Furthermore, the proposal of domain law was intended to break the logical chain of "independent departmental law—independent discipline—required law course—required exam content" that the Chinese legal academic world has long relied on to seek academic power and resources, and to advocate for a more open, problem-oriented academic ethos. However, compared to "function-oriented new domain laws" like tax law, environmental law, and financial law, which are guided by specific governance tasks, the characteristics of digital jurisprudence are markedly different. The former mainly focus on the legal response to specific social tasks and institutional functions, and usually do not touch upon deep-seated reforms at the level of legal methodology or paradigm. Digital jurisprudence, however, responds to the systemic transformation of digital society in its technological structure, cognitive models, and even normative foundations. The questions it raises are not limited to the novelty of the "object of regulation," but rather touch upon the fundamental question of "whether the legal paradigm is still effective." Therefore, simply incorporating digital jurisprudence into the framework of "domain law," while having practical strategic value, makes it difficult to respond to the task of theoretical reconstruction that it carries.

This article, on the basis of a typological review, advocates for the gradual introduction of reformist mechanisms while fully respecting the stability of the existing legal system, and for the prudent observation of the developmental potential of integrationism. Reformism not only helps to enhance the institutional adaptability of the current construction of the digital rule of law but also preserves a gradual space for theoretical renewal. As for integrationism, although it has not yet formed a unified paradigm, its profound reflections on judgment logic, normative construction, and knowledge boundaries are worthy of continuous attention and evaluation in future theoretical evolution. At the same time, although coherentism emphasizes the closed nature of the system and the self-sufficiency of norms, which can provide theoretical stability to a certain extent, it should also maintain an open posture and avoid a rigid response to the institutional uncertainty triggered by technological development. One should be particularly wary of the kind of "top-down" deductive systemic thinking that mechanically applies "past institutional experience" to suppress new legal problems arising from technological evolution. Historical lessons show that excessive reliance on traditional institutional logic can lead to institutional stagnation, such as Britain's issuance of the "Red Flag Act" in the late 19th century to artificially curb the development of automobiles, or the European Union's refusal to adopt the "safe harbor principle" in the early days of digital platforms, which led to regulatory lag. These cases remind us that if a theoretical system's closed nature becomes detached from the adaptive capacity of practice, it may instead become a structural obstacle to legal progress and social innovation.

At the current stage, we may not be in a position to hastily announce the arrival of a paradigm shift, but we should acknowledge that the intellectual challenges brought by digital technology are prompting jurisprudence to initiate a process of self-renewal on multiple fronts. The significance of digital jurisprudence may not lie in whether it can stand as an independent discipline, but in whether it can inject new intellectual momentum into existing legal theory, thereby promoting a more comprehensive understanding of the functional structure and institutional evolution of law. Future legal research should find a balance between openness and prudence, neither being confined by the closed nature of old systems nor recklessly chasing the superficial impact of technological change. Instead, it should continuously expand the boundaries of legal thinking while responding to practical problems. This is precisely the theoretical stance of "self-consistency as the foundation, reform as the path, and integration as the potential" that this article attempts to outline, and it is also a crucial step for digital jurisprudence to move towards maturity.