Law and the Internet
Availability: Optional for OII MSc and DPhil students.
Schedule: Hilary Term (Weeks 1-8). Wednesdays 10:30-12:30
Location: Seminar Room, Oxford Internet Institute, 1 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3JS
Convenors
Professor Christopher Millard, Oxford Internet Institute
Professor Richard Susskind OBE, Oxford Internet Institute
Malte Ziewitz, Said Business School
Background
The law, and lawyers, have a reputation for conservatism and resistance to change. It is perhaps not surprising then that the Internet should be perceived by many in the legal community as disruptive, characterized as it has been by dramatic developments in the information society. After the first flush of excitement in the mid-1990s about the imminent arrival of a new cyberspace order, however, a consensus emerged that governments were not going to give up their sovereignty. Although enforceability of particular rights or obligations in certain online situations might be problematic, there is now little doubt that existing laws, on the whole, continue to apply in the online environment, together with a growing corpus of new laws targeted specifically at ecommerce and other online activities.
Nevertheless, as the Internet has become established, and as there has been a relentless move online of social, business, government and other relationships (and related transactions and disputes), questions are again being asked about whether there is something special, perhaps indeed transformative, about the Internet and its impact on law and legal institutions. There are two important aspects to this debate, both of which will be covered in this course. The first is whether, because of the Internet, the way in which legal rules are made and implemented might need to change fundamentally. The second is whether, because of various advances in technology, and in particular the Internet, the way in which legal services are delivered and access to justice is provided should be, and perhaps inevitably will be, transformed.
The approach adopted by this course will be innovative and ambitious. Students will be exposed to a range of institutional dimensions of law, with a focus on a number of areas where technology is having a particularly dramatic impact, and will examine various fields of legal scholarship in light of them. From grasping what an institutional normative order may mean in a space of online communities, to discussing at which (if any) levels the state may venture beyond neutrality and engage with different conceptions of the good life that may be held in those communities, students will be prompted to think about what the legal concepts of personhood, legal relationships, obligations and things - around which much of the law revolves - signify in contemporary networked societies.
Key Themes
Three key themes recur in this course, and students should bear these in mind when undertaking course readings or attending classes:
What is a normative order and what counts as the law in the information environment?
How are traditional, institutionalized normative concepts such as state, persons, courts, lawyers and legal relationships evolving in the information age?
What are the limits of authority - and how might conflicts between competing normative sources that claim authority best be resolved - in a way that makes sense offline and online?
Course Objectives
The course takes a closer look at the legal challenges of networked information technologies. The goal is to provide students with an in-depth understanding of the current struggles for control and ownership in digital media and equip them with the tools to analyze and assess these conflicts from a normative perspective. This involves two analytical steps:
Understanding the challenges and limitations of conventional legal institutions on the Internet, especially those administered by the State
Reinterpreting and reinventing these institutions in the context of the Internet
In order to achieve this goal, the course combines foundational readings in law and legal theory with more topical analyses of legal institutions on the Internet. This approach enables students to make connections between the timeless questions of law and justice in society and revisit them in the broader context of networked information technology. To complement this framework, class discussions will pick up contemporary cases and events to which the concepts and theories will be applied.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the course students will:
Have a thorough grasp of major concepts and debates about law in digitally networked environments
Be able to assess critically the opportunities and limitations of both state and non-state legal institutions on the Internet
Be familiar with a number of substantive topics that will be relevant for further research in this field
Be able to think creatively about the normative challenges of the Internet and make this knowledge productive for policy analysis and design
Teaching Arrangements
The course will be taught during Hilary term in eight weekly classes, each consisting of a short lecture, class discussions, and occasional group exercises. All classes will take place on Wednesdays 10:30-12:30 in the seminar room at 1 St Giles.
Week | Session |
|---|---|
Week 1 | How does law work on the Internet? |
Week 2 | The end of lawyers? |
Week 3 | Jurisdiction and the Challenge of Enforcement: Internet Points of Control |
Week 4 | Dispute resolution, the courts and access to justice |
Week 5 | Copyright, Patents and Other Exclusive Rights in Information |
Week 6 | The future of privacy and the limits of regulation |
Week 7 | Normativity in the Shadow of the Law: Legal Pluralism on the Internet |
Week 8 | Governance, control and jurisdiction in the cloud |
Assessment
For the purposes of formal assessment all students will be required to produce one 5000 word essay which must be submitted to the Examinations School by 12 noon of Week 1 of Trinity term. The essay topics will be agreed with the course tutor and relate closely to the topics covered. There will be no final examination.
Each student will also be required to give one 10min presentation on a specific aspect of the session topic or to review the argument of one of the books under the additional readings for each session topic. Details of these presentations will be agreed in Week 1. Students will also be required to write one short (advised length: 1500-3000 words) essay on any of the 8 topics covered. This essay will provide a means for students to obtain feedback on the progress they have achieved.
Last updated on: 30 January 2010