Publicness of Platform’s Private Power: Discovering Platform Autonomy In platform-centric business models, platforms have evolved from private intermediaries into infrastructural actors with significant public implications. As private entities driving the digitalization of society and are responsible for providing essential public services, they have effectively engaged in the process of co-creating public value, thus transcending the traditional public-private dichotomy to become private entities with publicness. This article conceptualizes the evolution of platform autonomy – from creative to dominant to decisive – and examines its correlation with market power. Through their strategic positioning, platforms develop disciplinary power that enables them to shape a ‘third law’ as applicable rules. While this transformation holds potential for more efficient governance, enabling platforms to complement public regulation and contribute to good governance, it also introduces systemic risks. Platforms’ disruptive position and lobbying capacity may weaken the state’s regulatory capacity, and they impose structural constraints on consumer autonomy, undermining freedom of choice and facilitating imbalanced rules. The article ultimately argues that the evolution of platform autonomy gives rise to an increasing degree of publicness in platforms’ private power. Understanding this transformation helps explain why platform rulemaking authority has moved beyond merely private ordering, raising significant questions about the legitimacy and accountability of such authority and the reconfiguration of public-private regulatory relations.
Domestic Taxation and Digitalization: Livestreaming Commerce in China While much of the existing literature focuses on the challenges that the digital economy poses to international taxation, relatively little attention has been paid to its implications for domestic tax systems. The rapid rise of livestreaming commerce (‘LSC’) in China has provided a microcosm for evaluating these implications. By examining how LSC’s business model interacts with China’s domestic tax system, the article identifies several key issues hindering effective taxation, including income mischaracterization, exploitation of presumptive taxation, data accessibility and quasi-nexus. These challenges stem from the misalignment between China’s traditional tax framework and the digitalized LSC model. The Chinese tax authorities have responded principally with administrative measures, such as enhanced reporting requirements and enforcement campaigns. However, these measures focus on ex ante supervision and technological interventions rather than structural legal reforms, reinforcing China’s unique tax-administration paradigm that prioritizes monitoring over self-assessment. The article argues that the absence of comprehensive legal frameworks and judicial review limits the effectiveness of these responses, leaving systemic issues unaddressed and undermining the rule of law in taxation. It concludes by advocating for several legislative steps toward the modernization of China’s taxation of LSC and the digital economy in general.
The Right to Autonomy In recent years, human autonomy, agency and dignity have been at the heart of normative justifications for human rights law. From freedom of speech to freedom of assembly and freedom of movement, human rights presume that humans are autonomous agents, making their own choices and decisions and choosing their own actions. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to upend this normative state. Automated decision-making, opaque AI integrated into decision processes and recommender systems, all undermine the free nature of human choice. As automated decision-making encroaches on more areas of our lives, we may reach a tipping point where human autonomy is entirely abrogated. Meanwhile, recommender systems pre-empt human decision-making, curating and guiding users to preference some choices over others. This article extends on the work of James Griffin by arguing for an explicit right to human autonomy to be codified into human rights law, drawing on conversations had in the drafting of the Munich Convention on AI, Data and Human Rights. The argument rests on a consideration of imagined futures, relying on future-visioning and horizon scanning techniques to map out potentiality with regard to AI decision-making. The authors grapple with the hypothesis that human rights may no longer exist in a fully automated society and what this means for the future of human life. The authors take an interrogative approach to the existing literature on AI Ethics, which at times, focuses on outcomes in the short term, as opposed to longer-term considerations on the future societies AI systems will generate.
Enforcement of Consumer Rights in Digital and AI-Powered Markets This article explores the enforcement challenges of EU consumer law in the context of digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on the relationship between public and private actors. The rapid growth of digital markets and AI-driven business practices, such as dark patterns, digital goods and services, virtual influencers and opaque credit scoring systems, has intensified existing enforcement barriers and introduced new ones. Despite recent legislative reforms, including the Omnibus Directive, the Representative Actions Directive and the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Regulation enforcement mechanisms often remain insufficient, particularly when it comes to addressing complex, large-scale and cross-border violations. The article critically assesses the limits of individual consumer actions, the shortcomings of collective redress frameworks and the resource constraints faced by public authorities. It argues that more effective enforcement requires a rethinking of the roles and responsibilities of all actors involved. Key policy proposals include empowering consumers and organisations through financial and procedural support, introducing mandatory internal and external oversight for AI systems, expanding the use of follow-on claims and leveraging large digital platforms as enforcers through legal obligations. Ultimately, the article contends that the principle of private autonomy must be recalibrated within the EU’s internal market. Consumer protection enforcement should be viewed as a legitimate regulatory constraint on economic freedoms, provided it respects proportionality. Strengthening enforcement mechanisms through better cooperation, supervision and structural support is essential to safeguard compliance with consumer rights, ensure legal redress and uphold trust in digital and AI-powered markets.
Shifting Responsibilities and Eroding Autonomy in Tax Compliance: Impact of the Directive on Administrative Cooperation on the Evolving Roles of Tax Authorities, Taxpayers and Third Parties The evolution of the European Union (EU) Directive on Administrative Cooperation (DAC) marks a fundamental shift in the dynamics of tax compliance and EU tax governance, redefining the roles and responsibilities of taxpayers, third parties and tax authorities. Originally designed to reduce information asymmetry and enhance tax transparency, the DAC framework now relies heavily on third-party data collection. This transformation has introduced new reporting obligations that constrain the autonomy of both taxpayers and intermediaries, effectively outsourcing functions traditionally performed by taxpayers and tax administrations. Taxpayers are becoming increasingly passive participants, often relying on pre-filled returns generated from the vast amounts of data available to the tax administration. Meanwhile, intermediaries face growing legal obligations without corresponding safeguards, raising concerns about professional independence and legal liability. Tax authorities, operating in a digital environment, must now recalibrate their assessment powers to ensure proportionality and respect for fundamental rights. These developments expose all parties to new risks. This article, grounded in classic legal research, addresses the following pressing questions: How is the DAC transforming the relationship between tax authorities, taxpayers and third parties? How should the resulting shifts in responsibility, autonomy and risk be managed? By mapping the evolving roles of each stakeholder and examining the legal mechanisms available to mitigate emerging risks, such as legal professional privilege and data protection legislation, this article argues for a more balanced and coherent model that upholds transparency while safeguarding individual autonomy and legal certainty.
Editorial: ‘Changing Relationships Between Government and Persons, Organisations and Companies in the Digital Age: New Rights and Responsibilities’ This editorial introduces a special issue exploring how digital technology reshapes legal relationships between governments, individuals, and organizations, focusing on autonomy, property, and power dynamics through philosophical and legal lenses, with articles addressing AI’s impact on human autonomy, consumer rights enforcement, digital platform governance, and tax compliance challenges in the digital economy, ultimately highlighting the evolving interplay of public and private power and suggesting avenues for future research on autonomy and governance in the digital age.
‘Unlocking Opportunity’ for Housing Rights Mobilisation in Spain (2010-2020) This article investigates how Spanish civil society mobilised from 2010 to 2020 in response to the housing crisis. It focuses on the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) and other housing rights organisations’ use of protest, domestic advocacy, and legal mobilisation to challenge the marginalisation of housing rights. It shows that when faced with significant domestic obstacles, including stalled legislative reforms, state repression, and weak legal protections, these actors turned strategically to international legal mechanisms, notably the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR). Using a Legal Opportunity Structure (LOS) approach, it argues that civil society organisations in Spain strategically leveraged international human rights law to ‘unlock’ otherwise closed domestic opportunity structures. In doing so, the article contributes to the scholarship on domestic and international opportunity structures, foregrounding the role of civil society agency in shaping and activating opportunity.
This article examines the evolving relationship between contemporary protest and the rule of law in constitutional democracies. It argues that recent waves of protest are shaped by two intersecting dynamics: the declining responsiveness of institutional politics and the increasing use of legal language and strategies by social movements. Rather than rejecting the legal order, many contemporary protests mobilise around demands for the restoration or realisation of the rule of law commitments, such as judicial independence, fundamental rights, and democratic accountability. Drawing on global case studies, the article conceptualises protest as a form of legal mobilisation that both invokes and reshapes the rule of law. It highlights a dual movement: legal norms mobilise citizens to protest, while protest itself becomes a site in which these norms are embodied. At the same time, states respond through increasingly sophisticated regulatory techniques, including administrative restrictions, spatial control, and surveillance, which reconfigure the conditions under which protest can occur. The article critiques both formal and substantive theories of the rule of law as insufficient to capture this dynamic. Instead, it advances an interactional, procedural and teleological understanding, in which protest functions as a form of ‘rule-of-law agency’. From this perspective, protest is not external to legality but constitutes a locus where legal meaning is produced through interaction between citizens and institutions.
The Criminalisation of the Right to Protest in South Africa: Limiting Dissent in a Post-Apartheid Democratic State The right to protest is the cornerstone of most democracies. With the recent rise in protest action and civil unrest in South Africa, brought about by a culmination of political developments and state failures, the state’s response has been to silence dissent through instructive tactics of repression designed to dictate the expression and execution of the right to protest. The contradiction is that the political situation in South Africa keeps deteriorating, causing weakness in state organs, which is slowly seeping into the judicial system, despite its ability to remain independent in post-apartheid South Africa. This is clearly demonstrated in contemporary issues currently posing a threat to the right to protest, such as strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPP), unlawful municipal by-laws and collusion between state and corporate actors against the principles of public participation. These dynamics are reminiscent of colonial and apartheid-era laws, where voices of dissent against a demonically oppressive legal system were fiercely suppressed. Legal mobilisation has and still plays a pivotal role in safeguarding the right to protest in South Africa, even as the political situation continues to challenge state institutions and public accountability. This presents a stark contrast between the law/theory set out in the Constitution and enabling legislation, versus the practical situation and enforcement of the law. This article, therefore, argues that such measures undermine democratic principles and the rule of law and concludes by setting out recommendations to avoid the erosion and decay of the principles of public participation. The right to protest is a cornerstone of democratic governance, sustaining accountability and adherence to the rule of law. In South Africa, however, a recent rise in protest and civil unrest – driven by political developments and state failures – has been met with repressive state responses aimed at silencing dissent and controlling the exercise of this right. At the same time, deteriorating political conditions and weakening state institutions increasingly affect the broader legal system, despite the judiciary’s post-apartheid tradition of independence. These tensions are reflected in contemporary threats to the right to protest, including strategic litigation against public participation, unlawful municipal by-laws, and collusion between state and corporate actors that undermine public participation as a constitutional principle. Such dynamics recall colonial and apartheid-era practices of suppressing dissent. While legal mobilisation continues to play a crucial role in protecting the right to protest, a stark gap remains between constitutional guarantees and their practical enforcement. The article argues that these developments undermine democratic principles and the rule of law, contributing to the gradual erosion of public participation. It concludes by offering recommendations to counter this trend and safeguard democratic freedoms. Overall, the article analyses and critiques the state of the right to protest in South Africa, highlighting the growing tension between constitutional protections and restrictive governmental responses.
‘Poland Is a Woman’: Protest as a Counter-Power Against Restrictions on Women’s Rights The article examines the waves of protests against the restrictions on access to abortion in Poland, commonly referred to as the Black Protest. It argues that the mass mobilisations of 2016 and 2020-2021 significantly transformed the social imaginary surrounding the constitutional right to assembly. Historically, even politically oriented protests in Poland were rooted primarily in economic grievances. The 2016 Black Protest successfully halted the proposed tightening of abortion regulations until 2020. However, following the Constitutional Tribunal’s ruling K 1/20 of October 2020, which rendered Polish abortion law one of the most restrictive in Europe, the social imaginary of assembly shifted towards a form of counter-power exercised by citizens. The article conceptualises these protests as a catalyst for legal mobilisation and explores the subsequent legal proceedings initiated before both Polish and European courts. Through this lens, the analysis highlights how collective action reshapes the social imaginary of the right to assembly and participates in legal mobilisation processes.
Resisting Structural Epistemic Injustice Through Protest: A Matter of Epistemic Agency This article examines how structural epistemic injustice can be overcome through protest. We argue that this possibility is intrinsically linked to the concept of epistemic agency. Specifically, we contend that the core issue lies in recognising oneself as an epistemic subject and that injustice will persist unless individuals can fully embrace their role as epistemic agents. The fundamental problem, therefore, concerns the barriers that prevent such realisation. Although protest can be understood in different ways, we approach it as a form of epistemic resistance, drawing, in particular, on the work of José M. Medina. Medina’s account attributes epistemic value to protest by conceiving it as a practice through which individuals engage with and contest injustice. Our analysis builds on and critically engages with this framework, advancing the claim that the epistemic agency of oppressed groups within law is constrained by structural epistemic injustice. Focusing on the transformative potential of protest, we argue that the exercise of epistemic agency in law enables the activation of individuals’ epistemic capacities through collective action. To substantiate this claim, we examine women’s protests in Türkiye, showing how such mobilisations can constitute women as epistemic agents within legal processes. We begin by outlining the relationship between structural epistemic injustice and epistemic agency, before turning to the transformative power of protest. We then analyse how protest shapes epistemic agency through the modification and enforcement of legal norms, with particular attention to women’s movements combating violence against women and their impact on the Turkish legal system.
Of Protests, Publics and Law: Shaheen Bagh as an Instance of Legal Mobilization Since the emergence of the Arab Spring protests of 2010-2011, meaningful mass protests are observable across the world, which rely on law in their protest action. One such instance arose in India on a late winter evening in December 2019, when several elderly Muslim women organized themselves into a peaceful sit-in at Shaheen Bagh, a residential locality in New Delhi. They were protesting The Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 (CAA), which expedites the acquisition of Indian citizenship for the specified religious communities, except Muslims. The protestors at Shaheen Bagh creatively deployed law, particularly the Constitution of India, in their demonstration, as law was simultaneously wielded by the Indian state to supress democratic dissent in the anti-CAA protests in the country. This essay offers Shaheen Bagh as an instance of legal mobilization. It first explores the Shaheen Bagh protest as a ‘protest public’, a form of social actor theorized to examine spontaneous, self-organized mass protests around the world. It then explains how the public of Shaheen Bagh used the language of rights and the framework of legality to resist against CAA and articulate its vision of a secular and inclusive regime of Indian citizenship. In doing so, the essay argues for a critical and inclusive approach to legal mobilization, one which recognizes law as a complex terrain of social struggle and recognizes emergent forms of collective actors like protest publics. Such an analysis contributes to a more thorough understanding of the interrelation between protests and legal mobilization.
This article examines the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of intellectual property (IP) enforcement, specifically focusing on its use in detecting and preventing IP infringements. With rapid advancements in AI technology, there has been increasing reliance on AI-driven tools and solutions to combat the rising tide of IP infringements in various industries. The article provides an overview of the types of IP infringements that AI can effectively detect and prevent, including copyright infringement, trademark counterfeiting and patent violations. It discusses the key benefits of using AI in IP enforcement, such as enhanced efficiency, improved accuracy and broader reach in identifying infringements. The article also explores the challenges and limitations associated with deploying AI in the IP enforcement landscape, including issues of data privacy, algorithm bias and legal and ethical considerations. Furthermore, it examines the legal frameworks and regulatory initiatives that govern the use of AI in IP enforcement and highlights the need for a balanced approach that safeguards IP rights while addressing potential risks. Lastly, the article offers insights into future trends and developments in the field, emphasising the importance of ongoing research, collaboration and innovation to further enhance the effectiveness of AI in detecting and preventing IP infringements.
Electronic evidence (‘e-evidence’) is described as the digital data that are used to investigate and prosecute criminal offences. In the current digital era, it is hard to find a criminal investigation without digital evidence. However, their use in the criminal proceedings is ambiguous because of their volatility. The present article explores the complexities surrounding the collection, preservation and presentation of e-evidence in criminal cases. It examines the special characteristics of electronic data, such as its volatile nature and susceptibility to obstruction, which require specialised approaches to ensure its integrity in court. Traditional rules of evidence might be inadequate to manage the technical implications of digital information. Moreover, the emergence of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) introduces novel challenges in verifying the authenticity of electronic information. As a response, the legal instruments on cross-border access to e-evidence are explored alongside the recently adopted E-Evidence Regulation. In conclusion, this article aspires to shed light on the multifaceted challenges of e-evidence in criminal proceedings and focuses on the necessity to create trust in the use of this tool.
By recognising the pivotal role of the internet in shaping public discourse, this article embarks on a critical evaluation of the existing regulatory frameworks, aiming to navigate the challenges introduced by the symbiotic relationship between digital platforms’ algorithms and critically assessing the efficacy of current regulatory approaches in preserving freedom of expression. First, this article meticulously examines four challenges: algorithmic biases, automated content moderation, transparency and accountability of algorithms, and intermediaries intertwined with algorithms, scrutinising their role in enabling filter bubbles and echo chambers. Second, we examine the regulatory landscape concerning freedom of expression on digital platforms through the lenses of critical instruments such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the E-Commerce Directive (ECD) and then the recently introduced Digital Services Act (DSA). A normative analysis of the DSA in light of its challenges to uphold freedom of expression, compared with its predecessors, reveals the evolution of legal frameworks in response to the dynamic digital environment. Although legally designated as hosting services, Very Large Online Platforms’ (VLOPs) use of tracking technologies, algorithmic content curation and behavioural profiling places them beyond the passive or neutral roles envisioned for hosts or mere conduits. This hybrid operational model exposes a critical structural incoherence within the DSA’s tripartite framework, which risks leaving the most powerful digital actors insufficiently regulated. Finally, the synthesis crystallises the articles’ findings, emphasising the imperativeness of enhanced transparency, independent regulatory oversight, and the imperative to decouple regulatory financing from and by the big tech.
In the 21st century, digitalization has emerged as a prominent and transformative force, reshaping nearly every aspect of modern life. The wave of digital transformation has significantly impacted judicial systems globally, with China leading this shift through the implementation of what is referred to as ‘smart justice’. This transition involves the integration of digital technologies into traditional judicial practices. While technologies offer clear benefits, including improved efficiency, transparency and accessibility, they also introduce complexities that challenge judicial trust. Trust is the foundation of any effective judicial system, and in the context of smart justice, rebuilding trust through responsible digital innovation is essential. This article categorizes the issue of trust within judicial systems by examining it through three dimensions: cognitive trust, affective trust and trust belief. It analyses the origins of the current trust challenges from these perspectives and identifies key pathways for improvement in China. Chinese courts and legal scholars have actively engaged with these challenges by exploring diverse strategies to ensure that technological adoption enhances, rather than erodes, public trust. This article critically evaluates these institutional responses and situates them within broader global discussions about digital justice. It argues that while China’s model may not be universally replicable due to political and legal particularities, it offers valuable insights into how digital transformation can be harnessed to support trust in judicial institutions. These lessons are especially relevant for other jurisdictions navigating similar digital reforms while seeking to uphold the foundational values of fairness, accountability and public trust.
Domestic and international courts are prominent actors of justice, promoting changes in society. But what happens to courts when they are forced to operate in a digitalized world? The pandemic led most judges to comply with the restrictions by holding court sessions through a computer screen. This article presents an analysis on how the online transition changed the daily operations of courts through exogenous shocks – such as the COVID-19 pandemic (2019-2023) and artificial intelligence (AI) tools. At first glance, the solution is to hold sessions online, following the example of the United Nations and the Committees of the European Parliament. Although holding online sessions is a better solution than suspending or postponing them, this may have influenced profoundly the structure of courts. The article provides an example of both domestic and international courts to enrich this scenario of adjudication before and after online sessions started to be held. Unlike sessions held by other institutions, courts operate through specific Rules of Procedure, which have been affected by the digitalization of courts’ hearings. The article describes and evaluates several effects after the implementation of these online sessions, with a research design that includes a mix-methods approach with interviews, participatory observations and reports. It is foreseeable that courts may be forced to operate in a hybrid model – holding sessions both in person and online. To better function and continue to be actors of social change, courts will have to undergo institutional remodelling to adapt to upcoming crises and innovations.
The Proposal for a Regulation on the sustainable use of plant protection products (SUR) represented one of the most serious attempts to address the deleterious health and environmental impacts of pesticides in the European Union (EU). Despite the EU’s stance on pesticides as pollutants, and the political support by the European Commission for the SUR, it was voted down by the European Parliament in late 2023. While the SUR would have been the first binding legal instrument to set specific targets on the total amounts of pesticides used throughout the European Union within a more comprehensive food system context, its absence leaves us the existing regulatory framework for pesticides, which institutionalizes pesticide use as the main pest management strategy. Given the likelihood that much-needed future pesticide policies and regulations will follow in the SUR’s footsteps, the dynamics surrounding the drafting and voting down of the proposal provide an interesting case study for exploring how European law-making processes ‘lock’ food systems into unsustainable behaviours like pesticide dependencies. To this end, this article, using critical discourse analysis, identifies the narratives deployed to obstruct the pest management transition and details how overarching power dynamics manifested within the SUR’s law-making process to uphold lock-ins that reinforce capitalist resource-intensive approaches to agriculture.
The European Union is working on a legislative framework for sustainable food (FSFS). It is part of the Farm to Fork strategy (F2F), which aims for a ‘fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system’. The system, among others, aims to decrease pesticide and fertilizer use, increase the percentage of organic agriculture and ensure the effective use of technological innovations. Several authors have highlighted the potential contradictions and challenges the FSFS might pose. Solutions have also been proposed to resolve these issues. This article deepens some of the procedural, technical and normative choices that need to be made when developing a legislative FSFS. Next, the article discusses three commonly used strategies to deal with such choices and cautions legislators not to fall into similar traps seen in the history of regulating genetically modified (GM) crops in Europe to resolve these challenges. I argue that political and normative discussions on what kind of food system is ‘sustainable’ should not be avoided or continuously redirected to scientific, technical or legal debates or to stakeholders. Although each of these processes provides essential input for political decision-making, the decision-making itself ultimately relies on political debate, particularly on complex and normative matters such as sustainability, where full consensus seems unattainable. After taking into account all input in a reasoned debate, only by taking a political decision – regardless of its nature – can a subsequent step be taken in which the adequacy of the decision can be evaluated and adjusted if necessary.
