Parochialism and Pluralism in Cyberspace Regulation

Abstract

I predicted a few years ago that the greater connectedness brought about by globalization in general, and technology in particular, would introduce a new humility into our jurisdictional attitudes. Jurisdictional and choice-of-law rules premised on hermetically sealed sovereignty, where governments had exclusive power over their citizens and territory, did not fit a world in which the power and influence of governments extended beyond their borders and collided with conflicting legal norms within their borders. Connectedness, I concluded, would inevitably produce a new sensitivity in conflict of laws to the multiple sources of power and authority with which people must contend in a wired world. Professors Berman and Reidenberg, while sympathetic with that perspective, have here suggested an appropriate caveat: technology can both connect and separate, and globalization can turn governments both outward toward cooperation and inward toward isolation. Connectedness can make us xenophobic as well as cosmopolitan. Thus, Professor Reidenberg discusses how technology enables states to exercise control over multistate electronic transactions in order to enforce their own, legitimate regulatory preferences. He is generally sympathetic to such assertions of national authority and rejects the plea of “Internet separatists” for governments to leave cyberspace alone.