This article discusses how, after the 1990s, the problem of the relationship between Law courts and new communication and information technologies (NCIT) and especially that between courts and social communication, poses new issues to an analysis of relations between judiciary institutions and society. On the one hand, there emerges the State's capacity and will to regulate new technologies and new communication and information interests, as well as to incriminate and punish new socially harmful activities that became possible through those technologies; on the other hand, there is impact of the enormous expansion of new technologies and new informational and communicational interests within Law and its institutions, namely Law Courts. The article debates issues such as computerization of courts, new management techniques and their impacts on interprofessional relations, on a media-based justice, on the internal functionality of Courts, on rules and styles of professional action, as well as the impact of new information and communication technologies - and above all, of the media - on the relation between courts and a computerized and media-oriented society. It concludes by sustaining the need to explore the democratic potential of new technologies, the new possibilities of deliberative and participatory democracy, new forms of public control both over the State and over private production of public goods.
Courts; New communication and information technologies; State regulatory capacity