.
.
Peter Seipel (1939-2025)
.
Peter Seipel, Sweden’s first professor of legal informatics, passed away in March 2025. Peter Seipel was a pioneer who recognised early on the importance of information technology (IT) and understood that technology would have far-reaching consequences for social development, the legal sector and legal work. He had the ability to combine this insight with practical measures and, in 1968, with the support of Professor Jan Hellner, he started the Working Group for EDP (Electronic Data Processing) and Law. The working group became the world’s first academic initiative with this focus and was transformed in 1982 into the Institute for Legal Informatics (IRI). This took place at the same time as the group’s external seminar activities were spun off into the then newly formed Swedish Association for EDP and Law, now The Swedish Association for IT and Law (SIJU). IRI became a pure research institute.
The initiative was unusual in that it did not focus solely on regulatory issues, which might have been expected given that it was based at the Faculty of Law at Stockholm University. The project was explicitly interdisciplinary. It was as much about understanding the technical conditions as the legal implications. The understanding was that the way in which technical solutions are designed causes various problems and that it is therefore necessary to take legal considerations into account at the design stage. The invitation to the working group’s first seminar therefore stated that the structuring of data files would also be discussed.
Peter’s interest in the subject was not unique, but according to him, it was pure coincidence that he came to study IT and law. The reason was that on his first day as a student at the university, he ended up at the wrong introductory lecture. He had intended to study mathematics, but he couldn’t find the right building and found himself at the Faculty of Law’s introductory lecture. We can be grateful for that mistake. The seed was sown there, and his studies resulted in a Bachelor of Laws, a Bachelor of Arts, courses in EDP, and his first job as an amanuensis at The Law Faculty, with the military interpretationing school in between.
The idea that law should collaborate with information technology expertise and that this justified the establishment of a new academic subject was not without controversy. There was criticism and the work met with resistance. Others chose to adopt a head-in-the-sand strategy, and competing with established legal disciplines to raise resources for the project was not easy. Peter’s personality, social skills and ability to make contacts became the key. All this was combined with a great capacity for work, which was used to a large extent to pedagogically motivate the importance of the subject. This is well illustrated in his first articles in the Swedish leading law journal, Svensk juristtidning in 1970, on the use of automatic data processing technology and automated information retrieval in law.
The articles are a 60-page presentation of the subject, the first part of which is an educational overview of data processing terminology, the scope and division of the subject area, issues, register maintenance, legal statistics and more. The publication is an achievement in itself, not only because it appeared in a journal that was not known at the time for its innovative selection of subject selection. The text contains a section entitled EDP technology in connection with standardisation and standard application, which deals with the development of legislative technology, written 55 years before The Swedish Digitalisation Authority (DIGG) in 2024 published its guidance document Creating automation-friendly regulations.
Research in legal informatics has always been highly dependent on external funding, and since the subject’s domestic development was tentative, it was necessary to seek inspiration from other countries, which in the pre-internet era required correspondence by typewriter and paper mail. Peter’s language skills were a great help here, and literature in many languages was acquired. The initial ambition was to cover everything published in the Nordic languages, English, French, Russian and German. However, this endeavour soon had to be abandoned as the pace of publication increased.
After completing a licentiate thesis in 1971 on whether computer programs can and should be protected by copyright, Peter defended his doctoral thesis in 1977 with the title Computing Law: Perspectives on a New Legal Discipline. The subject was presented with detailed explanations and numerous examples. The work concluded with a classification scheme for the sub-subjects of legal informatics. The taxonomy was used in practice to sort the literature and forms the backbone of the extensive library built up at IRI. The classification can still be used as a basis, despite the emergence of many new phenomena. Over time, the research library and the material from the numerous projects carried out became a unique documentation of the earliest stages of the subject. This is also true internationally, and work has begun on transferring IRI’s older research material and library collections to The Swedish National Archives.
In parallel with starting research projects and participating in development work, Peter worked to establish legal informatics as a subject in legal education. This was gradually successful, and courses are now also offered regularly in computer and systems science programs. This was important work, which made it possible to achieve greater continuity in the activities by established teaching positions.
Organisationally, efforts were concentrated on strengthening cooperation and developing networks, both nationally and internationally. Domestically, this was illustrated by the initiative to establish The Foundation for Legal Information (1988), an association of central authorities, organisations and companies in the judicial system, inter alia including the Parliament, the Justice Ministry, the Bar Association and the Court Administration. Peter was also vice-chairman of the 1998 IT Commission and chairman of the government’s IT Legal Observatory from 1995 to 2003.
Internationally, Peter participated as an expert in several investigations and was a member of the EU’s Legal Advisory Board. As an internationally sought-after lecturer, he was also able to build up a broad international network of contacts. Special attention was paid to Nordic cooperation, and his early contacts with The Norwegian Centre for Computers and Law at The University of Oslo were significant. This led to the establishment of a series of Nordic conferences on legal informatics and a Nordic yearbook on legal informatics (1984). Peter was awarded an honorary doctorate at The University of Lapland in Rovaniemi in connection with the establishment of a Finnish Institute for Legal Informatics. The foundation laid by Peter’s long-term work resulted in legal informatics being designated an early profile subject at Stockholm University and IRI being mentioned in several external evaluations as a world leader in the field.
Peter Seipel remained faithful to Legal Informatics throughout his professional life. He was constantly active and deeply committed. For a time, he was also Dean of the Faculty of Law at Stockholm. This was another task he performed with creativity and diligence, documenting meetings, decisions and conversations in ongoing notes. Peter’s friendly personality is well known, always ready to support and encourage younger colleagues. Peter was also an educated person, knowledgeable and well-informed with well-considered insights, regardless of the topic of conversation. He was a role model in many ways, and many of us have a lot to thank him for. Peter Seipel was 85 years old.
By Peter Wahlgren, Former Director of IRI and head of the Foundation for Legal Information
A version of this text was originally published in Lov&Data 162 2/2025.
Curriculum Vitae – Peter Seipel
Publications by Peter Seipel
- Legal Uses for Computers: Sweden. In: Law and Computer Technology, Vol. 2 (1969) No. 2, 7
- Introducing Law Students to Computers. Swedish Experiences. In: Rutgers Journal of computers and the Law.Vol. 1 (1970) No. 1, 88
- Computer programming: An Analysis of Constraints and Freedom from the Point of View of Copyright Stockholm: Faculty of Law 1971 (mimeo, dissertation in Swedish)
- System Analysis from a Legal Viewpoint
In: Computer en Recht. Ed. F. de Graaf. Deventer Kluwer 1972 - Legal Controls of the Storage and Use of Personal Data. An Appraisal of the Swedish Approach.In DATA 1974, nr. 5, 43 Software Protection and Law. In: DATA 1975, no 6. 43
- Harmonization of Data Protection. The Scandinavian Scene. In: DATA 1975, no. 10, 28
- The Influence of Informatics on the Centralization/Decentralization of the Administration.
National Report Sweden.
Part II. In: Informatics and Administration. Brussels: IIAS 1977. - Computing Law. Perspectives on a New Legal Discipline. Stockholm: Liber 1977 (thesis)
- The Freedom of the Press Act, EDP, and official documents. Report to the Swedish Ministry of Justice 1983 (in Swedish)
- Introduction to Law and Informatics. Stockholm: Norstedts 1984 (in Swedish)
- Access to Computer Recordings. Report to the Committee on Data and Publicity, 1988 (in Swedish, SOU 1988:64)
- The Law of Databases. Stockholm: IRI 1990 (in Swedish)
- From Data Protection to Knowledge Machines.
Deventer: Kluwer 1990 (editor) /Introduction/ - The Jurist and the Computer.
Introduction to Law and Informatics. 5th edition. Stockholm: Norstedts 1994 (in Swedish) - Authors’ Rights and Users’ Freedom. On Present Day Concerns in the Copyright Field.
In: Nordinfo Nordic Conference on Copyright Issues 1994. Helsinki: Nordinfo Publication 30, 1994 - Commercialization of Government Information in Sweden. In: Commercialization of Government Information. A comparative symposium 23 September 1993 under the auspices of the Commission of the European Communities. University of Tilburg 1994
(Conference publication) - Ett gemensamt europeiskt försvar. Visingsöseminarium “Bilder av det goda livet”, 1995
- Softwareschutz und Softwareverträge in Schweden. In: Die internationale Softwarevertrag. Red. H Ullrich & E Körner. Heidelberg: Verlag Recht und
Wirtschaft 1995. - Law and the Bit Business. In: Man and Information Technology. Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences International Symposium. Stockholm: IVA 1995
- Collected Essays in Law and Informatics.Stockholm: Faculty of Law Study Materials 1995
- Comments on the EC Data Protection Directive: The View from Sweden. In: Journal of Law and Information Technology, Issue One, 31 January 1996 (ISSN 1361-4169, http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/elj/jilt/)
- Borderline Technology. Its difficulties in a Swedish Perspective. CITRA Conference on Access to Information 1998
- Copyright, information technology and the edifice of knowledge. English translation of an article in the Yearbook of the Swedish Vitterhetsakademien 1998
- Upphovsrätten, informationstekniken och kunskapsbygget. I: Vitterhetsakademiens årsbok 1998.
- Tajming. Konsten att leva med många tider. Öppen föreläsning vid Stockholms universitet, mars 1999
- Elektroniska affärer ur ett rättsligt perspektiv