Chapter 4 is devoted to technical solutions to rectify AI risks and harms. AI for social good projects, human-in-the-loop solutions, de-biasing, AI-generated text, image, and voice detection and testing are presented as potential technical fixes. Detecting AI-generated content remains a major challenge. Human-in-the-loop solutions and testing have proven to be such common-sense practices that they are promoted by AI-producing or -using businesses themselves as well as by laws. AI for social good projects and de-biasing produce a positive impact, but there seems to be a gap between expectations and reality. As is documented throughout this book, the roots of AI risks and harms are not technical; therefore, technical solutions cannot bring about transformative change in the face of AI risks and harms.

This coda takes the form of a sample judgment that rewrites Baron and Others v Claytile (Pty) Limited and Another [2017] to tangibly illustrate the promise of Alter-Native Constitutionalism. Contrasted with the real-life judgment issued by the Constitutional Court, which relied on liberal approaches, the Alter-Native ‘judgment’ gives willing courts the necessary tools to enforce the ‘property’ rights of ‘non-owners’ and thus highlights the opportunities for equitable solutions the Court has missed, including in its real-life judgment. Emphasizing the importance of robustly applying Ubu-Ntu (rather than the insipid ‘ubuntu’ that scholars and the Court have substituted for it) and applying Ntu Constitutionalism’s jurisprudential framework for constitutional and statutory interpretation developed earlier in the book, the opinion demonstrates existing possibilities for recognising shared rights and promoting housing as a relational, spatiotemporal ‘existence’. By reinterpreting constitutional and legislative provisions to respect indigenous onto-epistemological perspectives on land-as-housing, the Alter-Native opinion demonstrates a transformative approach to ‘property law’ that inherently critiques the Constitutional Court’s interpretation of the ‘property’ and ‘housing’ clauses largely to the exclusion of vernacular law. This Alter-Native opinion thus presents a literally embodied argument for the need for broadening restitution, addressing both enduring injustices and future possibilities over multiple generations.

Chapter 7 considers the developments that have taken place since the beginning of the von der Leyen II Commission, identifying how there has not only been continuity in the EU’s approach to technology control and its links to digital sovereignty but also an expansion and reinforcement of the approach. Faced with increased instability and geopolitical threat, the linkage of security and economy has become even more explicit for the von der Leyen II Commission, with the Competitiveness Compass taking an approach that appears to be a more assertive form of regulatory mercantilism, in which the element of defence is specifically incorporated into the EU’s rationale for action, with an expansion of technology controls including the development of an explicit push for defence technology industrial policy, the increased control over external dependencies and supply chains through its Preparedness Strategy, and an AI policy for Europe that includes significant investments for AI gigafactories.

Chapter 5 explores the complex relationship between Indigenous traditional knowledge (TK) and intellectual property (IP) concerning genetic resources. It begins by examining the challenges of distinguishing TK from IP and presents the Munzer Model as a potential compromise for addressing TK within the IP framework. The chapter then delves into national efforts to protect and recognize TK, focusing on US and Canadian cases, including the Cowichan Sweater example from the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games. Furthermore, it details the evolving landscape of TK in international trade agreements, highlighting its increasing recognition and integration as a ‘new norm’. By analysing these historic and current developments in TK recognition, this chapter emphasizes the need for a balanced approach that respects the unique nature of TK while navigating the complexities of IP frameworks. It underscores the importance of preserving and utilizing TK and genetic resources for the benefit of Indigenous communities and for advancing sustainable development.

While the rest of the book takes the form of a constitutional law text largely based on discussion of theory and court precedent, the prologue provides the lived, empirical day-to-day context out of which the project arose by sharing the stories of the ordinary people on whom the topics discussed have primary bearing. Moreover, given the grounded, ethnographic method from which the prologue’s scene-setting stories draw and the ‘constitutional ethnography’ to be applied more broadly as a methodology throughout the book, the prologue draws inspiration from qualitative scholarship’s emphasis on the need for researchers to state their positionality vis-à-vis the research. The prologue therefore describes the global transdisciplinary approach adopted in and through the book project which primarily builds upon critical Black, Indigenous, postcolonial and decolonial scholarship developed in the Global South and by marginalised communities in the Global North.

Chapter 5 is focused on the impact of national security review for cross-border listings of Chinese companies within the broader context of foreign investment regulation in China. By analyzing the law and practices of China and the United States, this chapter finds that the national security review regimes of the two jurisdictions have functional convergences despite some formal divergences caused by diverse political-economy landscapes. Their functional convergences are highlighted by China’s local practices, such as the de facto national security screening in the name of anti-monopoly review. There are many factors affecting China’s national security review regime for foreign investment, including the ongoing (and escalating) US–China competition (or conflict) at the international level and the evolution of state or party capitalism at the domestic level.

Examination of the Chinese Constitution and constitutionalism, overview of the structure and organization of Chinese government, and discussion of allocation of government powers among legislative, executive, judicial and supervisory branches, and the governing role of the Communist Party.

Over the past few decades, the Mediterranean Sea has become a complex geography of human migration and its governance. Yet, we remain without a clear language to take seriously this sea as a space shaped by the practices that transpire within it. Rather than treating the Mediterranean as a maritime zone traversed, this chapter examines this sea as a dense political geography in its own right. The chapter focuses on the policies and practices of the European migration governance programme, Eunavfor Med, to demonstrate how the actions that emerge as an effect of this programme are influencing this sea at large. In order to build up a language that considers the importance of these changing practices at sea, the chapter explicates an example of maritime power held by the ancient Greeks. This period is drawn upon both for its Mediterranean orientation, as well as the way it reflects an example of power that is rendered through the sea and the connectivities within it. Through borrowing on this colonial and thalassic example of at-sea connectivity, the chapter highlights this sea as a central political geography, where seafaring is tied in with political ordering, to reveal how contemporary European agendas of migration governance are shaping the Mediterranean.

In Tongoane v National Minister for Agriculture and Land Affairs, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that the government’s attempt to regulate property in traditional communities through the Communal Land Rights Act (CLARA) was unconstitutional. It emphasised that traditional land was already governed by indigenous ‘living law’ and CLARA sought to replace this vernacular law, a system evolved over time, with legislation. This highlighted the presence of indigenous law predating colonialism, challenging colonial notions like ‘lex nullius’ (no law) and ‘terra nullius’ (empty land), which denied indigenous Africans their rights. This chapter argues that South Africa’s post-apartheid constitutional vision fails to fully recognise and integrate this vernacular law, undermining true transformation, and instead advocates for ‘Alter-Native Constitutionalism’, which would amalgamate ‘customary’, ‘common’ and vernacular law to reflect the realities and normative convictions of most South Africans. This approach aims to rectify historical injustices and create a more just legal system, rooted in indigenous values and addressing social and economic inequities. Explicating the indigenously feminist decolonising concept of Alter-Native Constitutionalism, the chapter calls for reconstitution of South Africa’s legal framework and content to give full voice to indigenous world-sense and law-sense, advocating a shift away from Eurocentric logics and norms.

On my interpretation of Kelsen’s ‘pure’ theory of law, his basic norm must be understood as a regulative assumption, a claim about inquiry and what individuals must assume if their inquiry is into the authority of law. As such, this idea has both theoretical and practical dimensions. As a matter of theory, it requires an elaboration of authority as legitimate and attention to the way in which the relationship between those who wield authority and those subject to it can be said to be one of right rather than might. As a matter of practice, it requires attention to the way in which, in light of legal subjects’ experience of law, legal order is and should be designed with a view to vindicating its intrinsic commitment to the rule of law and its concomitant commitment to constitutionalism. However, all that cannot be had without acknowledging the drive towards substance in Kelsen’s theory, one that sacrifices its claim to be pure of ideology in the sense of political value commitments. But it preserves purity in an account in exclusively legal terms of how politics can take place in a space constructed by law, internationally as well as domestically.