Chapter 6 reconstructs the technology-specific legal contours of freedom of expression in the Internet age, presenting empirical evidence of the growing importance of technology for legal practice and regulation. Since data-processing technology is a prerequisite for free speech, the starting point is privacy law. An important distinction is made between data integrity and network integrity and the discussion on net neutrality and the open Internet is revisited. The case law of the ECtHR on Article 10 ECHR is also examined to see if there is a tendency to recognise an independent ‘right to transmit’. Moreover, the activities of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) can be seen to produce technology-related standards relevant to the freedom of expression. ICANN, which is responsible for routing data packets to their destination, controls the ‘master key’ to the entire global Internet and can thus influence the conditions under which freedom of communication is possible. Finally, the chapter addresses the technical standards for the Internet developed by the independent Internet Architecture Board and the Internet Engineering Task Force, which are also crucial for the freedom of expression.

This volume covers important ground in bringing the sea back into International Relations scholarship in a way that militates against a land/sea binary. In this concluding chapter we explore how this can productively be taken further through a lens of International Terraqueous Relations, which not only understands land and sea as connected, but also sees their interconnections as the condition of possibility -materially and symbolically – of the international itself. Specifically, we call for three dimensions to be further explored. First, we argue that the study of the sea has been connected, explicitly or implicitly, to a Western thalassodicy, a portrayal of the sea by which the West, and especially an Anglo-American West, rationalises and legitimises its moral, political, and military power over others, and raise the question of how to move beyond it. Second, while most analysis of the sea focus on realities pertaining to states, we draw attention to the need to explore the everydayness of international terraqueous relations. From racialised groups to the study of the ship as a space, it is essential to draw connections between the everyday processes and the emergence, reproduction and transformation of international processes. Finally, we argue that engaging with international terraqueous relations requires designing analytically precise tools recognising the differences, as well as the similarities, between different terraqueous spaces such as oceans, seas and lakes. Doing so, we think, offers a vantage point from which to examine how social imaginaries, practices and ecosystems interact.

Chapter 5 addresses business self-regulation as an AI governance model. Voluntary AI principles and codes of conduct have risen to prominence in the absence of AI laws since the mid 2010s. Numerous large companies have established internal or external advisory boards or councils and responsible AI teams to hold themselves accountable. The evidence on these self-regulatory bodies is mixed: Journalistic reports suggest improvements in business conduct in a number of cases, but one cannot ignore the fact that none of the boards, councils, or teams can force businesses to respect their decisions or suggestions. What is worse, some powerful AI companies have ignored calls to create self-regulatory institutions or disbanded them at the first sight of friction.

How does the encounter between monastic law and colonial law look from the perspective of Buddhist monastics? The chapter offers an alternative legal history of the nineteenth century, drawing on a largely unstudied archive of Sinhala- and Pali-language legal sources written by Buddhist monks. Using these sources, I highlight the creativity and productivity of Buddhist monastic lawmaking during the nineteenth century. A close analysis of monastic legal texts from this period also reveals key differences in the ways that monastic jurists understood and enacted legal pluralism when compared with colonial officials. Rather than treating the laws of the Buddha and the laws of the Crown as conflicting, as the British tended to do, monastic jurists purposefully aligned them. Rather than hardening legal boundaries between monastic and colonial regulation, monastic jurists pushed in the direction of integration, borrowing and exchange between local and imported laws.

Chapter 4 critically examines how the ECtHR has conceptualised the technological conditions of freedom of expression in its case law. The ECtHR’s practice only superficially acknowledges differences between the various technological media, treating technology as a ‘black box’ rather than analysing in depth the interactions between the technological medium and the process of receiving and transmitting information. While this may have been unproblematic in the age of the press and broadcasting, it needs to be revised now that the Internet is the leading medium, requiring a shift in perspective from legal doctrine to the social sciences. Correspondingly, this chapter reviews two leading approaches to the relationship between technology, society and law: the media theory of law and STS. The media theory of law provides a remarkable general explanation of how the historically dominant means of information dissemination influence the law, but takes an uncritical view of the technology involved and underestimates normative social structures in the digital environment. In contrast, the strength of STS lies in its use of detailed case studies involving complex interactions between society and materiality/technology via the concept of co-production, but offers a dissatisfactory treatment of the role of law.

Chapter 3 outlines the types of trial situations and penal sentences that are covered by the protective scope of the relevant IHL norms, in particular in relation to the nexus requirement – which requires a link between the conduct in question and the armed conflict – and the extension of IHL to intra-party conduct. The chapter then proceeds to flesh out the meaning of the core IHL provision applicable to penal proceedings, namely CA 3 and its requirement of a ‘regularly constituted court’. It argues that this phrase is best understood as incorporating the requirement that a court be ‘established by law’ and that the term ‘law’ in this context is not limited to ‘state law’. Finally, the chapter explains that international law neither explicitly prohibits nor explicitly permits the passing of penal sentences by armed groups and, therefore, armed groups enjoy the legal capacity to pass sentences in the form of a so-called weak permission. This conclusion entails that individuals participating in the passing of penal sentences on behalf of armed groups may be lawfully prosecuted for their actions under domestic law.

Chapter 2 opens the study of free speech in a globally networked digital environment by clarifying the meaning of the term ‘constitution’. Under the heading of transnational constitutionalism, intense discussions have taken place in recent years about constitutional thinking that seeks to break free from statehood and formalism. The question of the constitutional subject is of great importance here. In the twenty-first century, nation-states are still the primary constitutional actors, as they have been since the revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The contemporary era has also witnessed the emergence of transnational corporations, which have developed into powerful players within a globalised economy. As telecom service providers, equipment manufacturers, or platform operators, they have a particularly significant influence on the conditions governing freedom of expression. According to Gunther Teubner, transnational corporations should be conceived of as constitutional subjects. But what does this mean on the theoretical and practical levels? How can factual developments on the Internet be related to processes of producing constitutional norms? How should the relationship between state-centred and societal constitutional legitimacy be conceptualised? These questions are addressed within the framework of transnational legal theory.

United by their realistic approach to the study of democratic politics, Hans Kelsen and Joseph Schumpeter similarly sought to de-ideologise ‘classical’ accounts of popular sovereignty. Both developed an analytical framework to explain how modern democracy, based on parties and the electoral selection of representatives, functions and realises its ideals. Both emphasised that democracy lasts only if it successfully generates a ‘compromise’ between the contingent majority and the temporary minority (in the terminology for Kelsen) or if current majorities exercise ‘self-control’ (in the language of Schumpeter). However, neither explained the mechanisms that induce democratically elected majorities to limit themselves in the practice of governmental power. The chapter first charts the innovations introduced by Kelsen and Schumpeter into our understanding of democracy; then, it teases out their views on how majorities abstain from aggrandising their power beyond some limits. For both, such limits must be self-enforcing and observing them must constitute an equilibrium. Yet, a proper understanding of how this equilibrium emerges remains one of the greatest challenges for contemporary scholars of democracy. ‘Compromise’ or ‘self-restraint’ is almost definitionally a requisite of democratic politics, but it cannot be imposed from outside, and it cannot just follow from agreements about certain rules, unless those rules are self-enforcing. As the chapter explains, it must be in the best interest of the democratic rulers to stop monopolising power given the potential reactions of the opposition, and it must be in the best interest of the opposition to participate peacefully given that the incumbent stops. Despite the significant progress in the normative and empirical study of democracy over the past several decades, the greatest challenge faced by Kelsen and Schumpeter has not been completely resolved.

For an academic discipline dealing with the global, it is peculiar that International Relations (IR) has limited its gaze to a little less than 30 percent of the globe – the landed part. With sea-level rise, depletion of fish stocks, plastic pollution and piracy making the news repeatedly and constantly, it is obvious that the sea matters in international relations. It should also matter to the discipline studying these relations. In related disciplines, burgeoning literatures have recast the importance of the sea for understanding both the past and the present. Time has come for IR to catch up. This would benefit the discipline, but it would also make contributions to a better understanding of the sea. With its diverse approaches to conflict, cooperation and political co-existence, IR has obvious insights to bring to the study of the sea. In this chapter we discuss how and why IR has engaged (or not) with the sea, we explore what other disciplines can offer IR and we suggest some possibilities for fruitful engagement. We first explore why the sea has been missing from IR and the challenges facing us when trying to theorise the sea. Then we engage with the developing literature in other disciplines from the last two decades, illustrating why an IR-take makes sense, and where there is room to expand on the existing IR literature. The third section puts the focus on politics, circulation and control, before the last section lays out how the different chapters of the book engage with these overarching topics.