AJIL Unbound最新文献

{"title":"Hiding in Plain Sight? Conceptualizations of Databases in Migration Law and International Tax Law","authors":"Lovisa Häckner Posse, Hedvig Lärka","doi":"10.1017/aju.2023.22","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2023.22","url":null,"abstract":"Databases are increasingly used in international law settings. This requires new strategies for those who want to critique international legal practices and their effects. In this essay, we claim that legal scholarship tends to conceptualize the database in ways that leave older and inadequate ideas of legal method(s) and sovereignty in the context of international law largely unquestioned or even serve to reinforce them. Further, we argue that these tendencies obstruct proper understandings of international legal practices and prevent adequate critique. To illustrate the extent of these tendencies, we provide examples from our own research areas: migration law and international corporate income tax law. We contend that empirical studies of how databases are used in these and other legal settings, can help demystify and rework well-established assumptions through which international law, and the database, are seen.","PeriodicalId":36818,"journal":{"name":"AJIL Unbound","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42979792","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Marine Ecosystem Bodies as Entangled Environments and Entangled Laws: Drones and the Marine Environment","authors":"Gabriela Argüello, M. Arvidsson, N. Krabbe","doi":"10.1017/aju.2023.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2023.19","url":null,"abstract":"The adoption of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the steady development of international environmental law in the twentieth century shaped the marine environment as an object of legal protection. However, the exponential growth of substantive obligations to protect the marine environment, conserve marine biodiversity, and prevent marine pollution, has been largely ineffective due to lack of enforcement. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) deployed for marine environmental protection are seen, in scholarship and policy, as a means to close the enforcement gap, thereby revolutionizing the field by significantly increasing states’ maritime awareness. In contrast, our tentative analysis shows that while UAVs can translate complex environmental concerns into data readily available for analysis and action, such datafication of marine environments comes with high risks. More specifically, datafication enables multiple uses of gathered data, including for surveillance, military, and commercial purposes. These concerns tend to fall outside current debates on the international regulation of the use of UAVs in marine environments. In our essay, we explore whether international law recognizes the possibilities and risks involved in deploying UAVs into the marine environment. We draw on doctrinal and posthuman feminist legal approaches to analyze how UAVs interact with the wider context of “marine ecosystem bodies” in terms of international law, as well as how those terms may need to be reconfigured to accommodate the complexity of the many actors, agents, and materials of marine ecosystems.","PeriodicalId":36818,"journal":{"name":"AJIL Unbound","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42854168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Automating Racialization in International Law","authors":"Priya Gupta","doi":"10.1017/aju.2023.21","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2023.21","url":null,"abstract":"From the continuation of colonial power structures in global economic development institutions, to immigration policies that favor applicants from white-majority European countries, to the use of counter-terrorism law to target primarily Muslim people, international law and its domestic analogues reflect and further inscribe racial distinctions and hierarchies. Racialization in international law occurs in the more visible areas of public decision making but also in mundane, administrative practices. In this essay, I argue that digital technologies are at the heart of automating processes of racialization in international law. Digital technological instruments effectively divide the global population, decision by decision, in adherence to the logics of racial hierarchy: they distribute social and material rights and privileges through financial, welfare, and immigration decisions while simultaneously deepening and entrenching state surveillance, policing, and violence.","PeriodicalId":36818,"journal":{"name":"AJIL Unbound","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48804644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Critical Subject and the Subject of Critique in International Law and Technology","authors":"G. Gordon, Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi, Dimitri Van Den Meerssche","doi":"10.1017/aju.2023.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2023.20","url":null,"abstract":"The making of legal subjects has long been a crucial terrain for critical theory, also in relation to international law, where both emancipatory promises and expressions of power or discipline are tied to how subjects are recognized and enacted. International law's modes of subject-making have therefore been an important site of aspiration, struggle, and critique. While some have celebrated the rise of the individual on the stage of international law, the liberal ideal of legal and political subjectivity lingering in these celebratory accounts has been confronted by different strands of feminist, post-colonial, and Marxist critique. With proliferating use of digital technologies in practices of (global) governance, the making of legal subjects has taken novel forms. Big data manufacture subjects in ways that spark new legal anxieties and destabilize or problematize established patterns of critical engagement. In data-driven practices that we will describe, subjects are no longer exclusively enacted as abstract autonomous entities or classified along stable criteria (of difference or enmity). Sustained by tools of pattern recognition and technologies for the “unsupervised uncovering of correlations,” nascent forms of global governance by data produce subjects as transient clusters of attributes and data points within transient clusters of attributes and data points—bundles of vectors within vectors, only tentatively and temporarily tied together. In this essay, we map out how this mode of subject-making has become prevalent in different domains of international legal practice. We trace these dynamics to changes in the exercise of state sovereignty and the technoscopic regimes—assemblages for information flow, processing, retention, and surveillance—that states rely on.","PeriodicalId":36818,"journal":{"name":"AJIL Unbound","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46668385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Digital Economy and National Security: Contextualizing Cybersecurity-Related Exceptions","authors":"Shin-yi Peng","doi":"10.1017/aju.2023.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2023.18","url":null,"abstract":"This essay addresses the challenges of the digital economy in the context of cybersecurity threats that have growing implications for national security. It analyzes cybersecurity-related exceptions to international trade rules to explore whether and how these exceptions protect the state's digital policy space. The essay argues that the pre-digital era exceptions to trade rules are too narrowly framed to address cybersecurity concerns. This is in contrast to trends in the new generation of international trade agreements that create expansive security exceptions that are designed to reset the balance between international trade and national security. These new approaches must, however, be carefully guarded against potential abuses.","PeriodicalId":36818,"journal":{"name":"AJIL Unbound","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41436258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Deterring Digital Trade Without Discrimination","authors":"S. Evenett, Johannes Fritz, Tommaso Giardini","doi":"10.1017/aju.2023.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2023.15","url":null,"abstract":"Commercial activity and regulatory oversight of the digital economy are growing apace. This essay argues that regulatory heterogeneity can deter digital trade without discrimination. Domestic policies that are not discriminatory can still result in fragmentation of the global digital economy, if sufficiently heterogeneous. We find that rules at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in digital trade agreements offer important directions but insufficiently mitigate heterogeneity. We suggest that heterogeneity should be addressed through the progressive expansion of international trade law. We emphasize the importance of encouraging regulatory coherence and pre-empting the formation of digital blocks.","PeriodicalId":36818,"journal":{"name":"AJIL Unbound","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44089915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction to the Symposium on Digital Trade","authors":"Anne van Aaken","doi":"10.1017/aju.2023.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2023.13","url":null,"abstract":"Many people around the world are now digital natives. Our daily life is becoming ever more digitalized—and this digital revolution has also fundamentally changed international trade over the past decades. With one click, one can purchase goods thousands of kilometers away. And in services, immediate, ongoing international collaboration through web platforms, telecommunication, or transborder e-payment are becoming standard now. These new digital technologies offer new opportunities, especially for developing countries that seek to integrate themselves into global value chains, but they also pose considerable risks for human rights, including inequality between people and countries as well as for national security. Adapting trade law to the new digital world is just one challenge of rapid technological development and is the theme of this AJIL Unbound symposium. This symposium addresses the questions of what digital trade is; how existing trade law covers it and what challenges arise from the current legal norms; and how digital trade rules account for national security and human rights concerns as well as inequality and developmental concerns of the Global South. It discusses how one should approach the delicate interlinkages between trade, technology, human rights, development, and security. Digital trade cannot be seen in isolation from other concerns such as human rights or geopolitics. It is a crucial component of a bigger package of rapid changes, technological and otherwise, facing the world. As the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General has warned: “The world is at a critical inflection point for technology governance.”1 Digital trade law can help to find suitable solutions for the problems facing the world, or it can hinder them. The UN High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation has identified many challenges on how to adapt to the new digital world, pertaining to inclusivity, human and institutional capacity building, human rights and human agency protection, promoting trust in digital technology, security and stability, and fostering global digital cooperation.2 The 2024 UN Summit of the Future aims at finding ways to achieve a just digital transition that unlocks the value of data and protects against digital harms. The UN High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, as a preparatory Board for the Summit, has formulated several priorities: strengthening public capacities to adequately participate and regulate in the digital age; ensuring that the benefits of digital innovation are more widely shared; improving digital literacy; preventing digital harms; securing human rights online; and creating adequate data governance. As the Board has stressed: “The wealth and safety of nations over the next century may well depend on our ability to unlock data’s potential in fair, equitable, and safe ways.”3","PeriodicalId":36818,"journal":{"name":"AJIL Unbound","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44172542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Digital Trade, Development, and Inequality","authors":"María Vásquez Callo-Müller, Kholofelo N. Kugler","doi":"10.1017/aju.2023.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2023.17","url":null,"abstract":"The links between and among digital trade, development, and inequality are multifaceted and ever evolving. They depend on what is understood as development and as inequality, concepts that transcend the North-South divide, and the fora in which these issues arise. Conceptually, development and inequality are intrinsically intertwined as the measures to address both are often complementary or even the same. In this essay, we consider development and inequality as pertaining to the ability of developing countries and least-developed countries (LDCs) to shape and participate in the digital economy, and particularly, the regulatory framework for digital trade. We explore how the relationships between digital trade, development, and inequality are addressed in the main venues for digital trade rulemaking: the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). We then examine two contentious issues in digital trade: the customs duty moratorium and data governance.","PeriodicalId":36818,"journal":{"name":"AJIL Unbound","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56958277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What Are Digital Trade and Digital Trade Law?","authors":"Mira Burri, Anupam Chander","doi":"10.1017/aju.2023.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2023.14","url":null,"abstract":"Digitization has greatly expanded the scope of trade, and with it the scope of trade law. But the regulatory framework, although growing in bilateral and regional fora, is highly dynamic and remains fragmented, increasing the challenges facing digital trade law.","PeriodicalId":36818,"journal":{"name":"AJIL Unbound","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42936414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Digital Trade Law and Human Rights","authors":"Mira Burri","doi":"10.1017/aju.2023.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2023.16","url":null,"abstract":"Trade and human rights have had a complex and contentious relationship. While trade experts assume that human rights and trade law are mutually supportive, human rights lawyers have seldom shared this opinion. Rather, they argue that across different contexts, such as climate change, culture, and development, the hard rules of international trade law focus almost exclusively on economic values and sideline human rights. This essay seeks to shed more light on these interfaces, focusing particularly on the tensions between trade law and the first generation of human rights, like privacy and free speech, that have been rarely discussed so far. It also addresses a gap in the literature on international economic law and human rights with respect to the impact of digitization. In particular, the essay focuses on the human rights implications of digital trade rulemaking, as a relatively new and dynamic subset of international trade law.","PeriodicalId":36818,"journal":{"name":"AJIL Unbound","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42374178","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}