“Lagom Jurisdiction” – What Viking Drinking Ettiquette Can Teach Us about Internet Jurisdiction and Google France

Abstract

The law of Internet jurisdiction is facing a crisis. While there is widespread and growing recognition that we cannot anchor Internet jurisdiction in the outdated, typically overstated, and often misunderstood, territoriality principle, few realistic alternatives have been advanced so far.This article seeks to provide an insight into the conceptual mess that is the international law on jurisdiction; focusing specifically on the concepts of sovereignty and jurisdiction, with limited attention also given to the impact of comity, and international human rights law. These issues are studied through the lens of the so-called Google France case that comes before the CJEU in 2018. The article argues that we may usefully turn to the Swedish “lagom” concept – which allegedly stems from Viking era drinking etiquette – as a guiding principle for how we approach Internet jurisdiction.