Much is made of Australia’s isolation as the only nation in the common law world without a comprehensive statutory or constitutional scheme for human rights protection. Yet, for all their paucity in Australian legislation, human rights seem, at times, to be everywhere in contemporary Australian legal and political discourse. According to two commentators writing in 1999, ‘the [Australian] judiciary [has become] more conscious of rights, and more willing to give effect to them where possible.’ The same commentators went on to urge ‘reconsideration’ of ’the training and patterns of thought of [Australian] lawyers … so that they may be better equipped to think, reason and argue in terms of rights.’ In April 2004, Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner, Dr Sev Ozdowski, sounded a familiar note in contending: ‘if Australian courts were able to interpret a domestically developed code of civil rights, in time this Australian jurisprudence would contribute to better international understanding of our way of life’.

Scholarship concerned with international law, technology, and computation has been burgeoning since the mid-to-late twentieth century. Over the past decade, it has taken shape as a discernible sub-field of international legal scholarship. An International Law and Technology Interest Group was created within the American Society of International Law in 2013, for instance. By 2021, international law and technology was already considered ripe for “rethinking.” Some of this work has been solutionist, aimed at generating order-restoring answers to the “upset[s]” caused by technological change. Some of it has been constitutionalizing, canvassing prospects for “a transformative constitutionalism for the digital human condition.” Much of the scholarship has sought to give humanist (or post-humanist) pause to the ever-increasing pace of technological change.

If, as has been claimed by one of their most successful proponents, blockchain technologies “automate away . . . center[s]” of authority, in lieu of subordinating peripheries, then what might this imply for global governance: already the work of a distributed politico-legal regime without a single center? Does blockchain seem likely to emancipate and equalize in the ways frequently anticipated? Whose authority is being “automate[d] away” and whose is being augmented by prevailing blockchain implementations? How might blockchain-borne redistribution bear upon law and legal institutions, or what might it demand of those, on the international plane? How might we envision blockchain-based futures on the global plane? These are among the questions taken up by contributors to this symposium. Before examining the various ways in which this rich suite of essays approach these and other cognate questions, the central object of their concern—blockchain—warrants brief, explanatory attention.

It is an immense privilege to respond, as discussant, to James Gathii's 2020 Grotius Lecture.1 I have known and admired Professor Gathii and his work for decades. He is one of those people who manages to combine great accomplishment in international legal scholarship and practice with an unswerving commitment to teaching, collegiality, and mentoring. In these, and in other ways, James Gathii walks his talk. And his talk, as you have heard, is challenging.

Who was responsible for the cyberincursions upon the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that took place during the U.S. presidential campaign? Russia's “senior most officials”? A “a tattooed 26-year-old” running a server rental company in western Siberia? U.S. political party leaders and other insiders disinclined to implement “best in class” cybersecurity measures? Or does responsibility lie elsewhere?

Open the website of the Financial Action Task Force (or FATF) and find your way to the “FATF Presidency” page. Up until the end of June 2015, you would have encountered a headshot of a dapper fellow with smiling eyes and a pink bowtie: Roger Wilkins OA, President of FATF between July 2014 and June 2015. A one time “mandarin” of the public service in Australia (former Secretary of the federal Attorney-General’s Department in that country), Mr. Wilkins seems an apt embodiment of those qualities that Stavros Gadinis would have us see in the FATF, as a “ministry executives” network. It seems entirely plausible to cast Wilkins as a vehicle of such networks’ “key motivation”—to pursue “broad societal goals.” From his record, he seems well suited to the role of guardian of “states’ interests” in a “secure environment,” deft at deploying his “longstanding connections” and “power relations” in order to “strike deals” and, where necessary, unleash “sanctions’ firepower.” In short, Mr. Wilkins seems to “fit neatly within the three types—private, regulator, ministry” around which Stavros Gadinis’ thought-provoking article revolves.

One dusty day in 2002, at Takhta Baig Voluntary Repatriation Centre near Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan, an Afghan woman—let us call her Amena—entered a nondescript room and sat down in front of a camera. A brief conversation took place with a woman sitting nearby at a computer terminal. Amena placed her chin where she was directed to do so, swept back a few strands of hair creeping out of her veil, and stared straight ahead for a few seconds while a series of photographs of one of her eyes was taken. Almost immediately, a small alarm sounded on the computer terminal of the woman seated alongside her. Amena was gently ushered toward the other side of the room for discussions with other officials. Some short time later, she was advised that her request to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for a modest cash grant and some supplies to aid her and her family's repatriation to Afghanistan had been denied. This was because, according to output of the UNHCR’s iris verification program, she had already received assistance earlier the same year. When asked, Amena admitted that she had indeed sought UNHCR repatriation assistance multiple times, under pressure from family members. She walked away. Soon, she could soon no longer be seen amid the press of trucks, cars, bicycles, and people that stretched to the suburbs in the distance.