Johns: International Law and Digitalisation

Fleur Johns (Univ. of New South Wales - Law) has posted International Law and Digitalisation (in Cambridge History of International Law (Vol. XII): International Law Since the End of the Cold War, Eyal Benvenisti & Dino Kritsiotis eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Digitalisation has wrought fundamental change in the stuff of international law since the end of the Cold War: the objects towards which it is oriented; the subjects by and for which it is understood to be made; the matters with which it is concerned; the materials, rhythms, politics, protagonists and modalities of its operation. These changes have been entangled with others and have helped to fuel and shape many of them. The claim is not that digitalisation has made international law stronger or weaker across the board or that it has overridden all prior or alternative logics of the discipline. Rather, this chapter contends that digitalisation has enlivened multiple tonalities within the discipline of international law and ramified a range of conflicts within it. This chapter will first explain what is meant by digitalisation and reflect briefly on the conundrum of ‘Cold War’ periodisation before turning to various sub-domains into which international lawyers have traditionally subdivided their field to survey the ingression of the digital in each. This sequence begins with the digitalisation of the global economy and its international legal infrastructure. It continues with the digitalisation of war as practised and comprehended by international lawyers and concludes with the digitalisation of global politics as imagined and conducted in the international legal field. A final section will reflect on the significance of this ingression for post-Cold War hubris, New Cold War entrenchment, and allegiances and struggles that surpass both.