The rapid convergence of artificial intelligence, data management, digital identity, blockchain infrastructures, smart contracts, digital twins, immersive environments, and Metaverse/Web 4.0 platforms has revealed the structural insufficiency of the classical legal conceptual apparatus. The traditional legal definition mostly stabilizes the meaning of the term within the normative text, while digital law requires definitions that can simultaneously reflect technological functionality, algorithmic implications, interoperability requirements, evidence, responsibility and jurisdictional linkage. The article aims to substantiate technical and legal definitions as initial modules for the design of technical and legal norms (TLN) — a new type of normative construction of modern information law. The research methodology combines doctrinal analysis, comparative legal method, legal and linguistic analysis, legal semiotics, system-structural method, normative modeling and AI-assisted legal modeling under mandatory human control. The article shows that modern digital regulatory acts, including the EU AI Act, GDPR, Digital Services Act, Data Act, eIDAS 2.0, Cyber Resilience Act, and MiCA, are already built around complex technical and legal definitions that define the boundaries of rights, obligations, risks, compliance, responsibility, and jurisdiction. The scientific novelty lies in the proposed ten-stage algorithm for designing a TLN with the use of AI and the mandatory participation of a human expert.
Highlights:
1) Technical and legal definitions are infrastructural elements of digital law;
2) Technical and legal norms transform technological phenomena into rights, obligations, guarantees and mechanisms of responsibility;
3) AI can support legal modeling, but does not replace a human expert;
4) Modern EU digital legislation demonstrates the growing importance of technical and legal definitions;
5) A ten-stage algorithm for designing the TLN as a new type of normative construction of information law is proposed.
