This article addresses compliance within the European regulatory framework, arguing for the need to move beyond traditional ontological models toward epistemological approaches to compliance-based analysis: what has been termed as a sematic turn. Static representations of legal norms are increasingly inadequate to capture the complexity of technologically mediated regulatory environments and the dynamics of living law, particularly where compliance assessment involves human and non-human cognitive processes and public administrative action. The contribution conceptualizes compliance not as a binary condition of conformity, but as a dynamic process of knowledge production, interpretation, and justification, closely linked to conditions of structural anomie and regulatory uncertainty. Drawing on legal philosophy and legal informatics, and engaging with phenomenological perspectives, the analysis reconstructs the epistemic dynamics underlying compliance practices, focusing on the intelligibility of legal provisions, risk-based governance, and explainability requirements. The examination of European regulatory regimes such as the GDPR, the NIS II Directive, and the Artificial Intelligence Act highlights the emergence of plural epistemic foundations capable of integrating legal, linguistic, technological, and organizational dimensions. From this perspective, the article argues that a transition to epistemologies of compliance is both theoretically necessary and practically relevant for governing complex regulatory systems shaped by advanced technologies.
Il contributo affronta il tema della compliance nel contesto normativo europeo, con particolare attenzione alla necessità di sviluppare nuove epistemologie della conformità nell’ambito della compliance based analysis. L’analisi muove dalla constatazione che i tradizionali modelli ontologici risultano insufficienti a cogliere la complessità dei contesti operativi e del cosiddetto diritto vivente, specialmente quando la valutazione della conformità coinvolge processi cognitivi umani e non umani e l’operato della pubblica amministrazione. L’obiettivo è comprendere e spiegare le dinamiche conoscitive sottese alle pratiche di valutazione della conformità, ricostruendo le diverse fasi dell’intelligibilità delle disposizioni normative e dei documenti che ne derivano. I dati e i modelli esaminati consentono di ipotizzare l’emergere di basi epistemiche plurali, capaci di integrare dimensioni linguistiche, modellistiche e operative. In tale prospettiva, si sostiene la necessità di una transizione dalle “ontologie” alle “epistemologie”, particolarmente rilevante quando la conformità è chiamata a misurarsi con standard normativi vincolanti e con sistemi tecnologici avanzati. Il contributo propone una (ri)lettura di queste dinamiche.
Epistemologie della compliance nel semantic turn. Anomia e conformità nell’informatica giuridica e nella filosofia del diritto / M. Buffa. - In: CALUMET. - ISSN 2465-0145. - 25:1(2026), pp. 24-41.
Epistemologie della compliance nel semantic turn. Anomia e conformità nell’informatica giuridica e nella filosofia del diritto
M. Buffa
2026
Abstract
This article addresses compliance within the European regulatory framework, arguing for the need to move beyond traditional ontological models toward epistemological approaches to compliance-based analysis: what has been termed as a sematic turn. Static representations of legal norms are increasingly inadequate to capture the complexity of technologically mediated regulatory environments and the dynamics of living law, particularly where compliance assessment involves human and non-human cognitive processes and public administrative action. The contribution conceptualizes compliance not as a binary condition of conformity, but as a dynamic process of knowledge production, interpretation, and justification, closely linked to conditions of structural anomie and regulatory uncertainty. Drawing on legal philosophy and legal informatics, and engaging with phenomenological perspectives, the analysis reconstructs the epistemic dynamics underlying compliance practices, focusing on the intelligibility of legal provisions, risk-based governance, and explainability requirements. The examination of European regulatory regimes such as the GDPR, the NIS II Directive, and the Artificial Intelligence Act highlights the emergence of plural epistemic foundations capable of integrating legal, linguistic, technological, and organizational dimensions. From this perspective, the article argues that a transition to epistemologies of compliance is both theoretically necessary and practically relevant for governing complex regulatory systems shaped by advanced technologies.| File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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