Danger from tweeting presidents – University of Innsbruck
In the book on the digital transformation of international law, published by Matthias C. Kettemann from the Institute for Theory and Future of Law together with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg, Internet and international law experts examine how the Internet examines international relations has changed.
With colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg, the Innsbruck Internet lawyer Prof. Dr. Matthias C. Kettemann from the Institute for Theory and Future of Law has published a book on the digital transformation of international law. Open access, which is particularly important to the advocate of free access to knowledge – which, incidentally, is also protected under international law.
The book is the second major result of a multi-year project by Prof. Kettemann, who also heads the section “International Internet Law” (The first was a rare special issue of the leading journal for foreign public law and international law in the discipline).
While international law is often credited with the Peace of Westphalia (1648), international law is a very dynamic area of law; as dynamic as the internet. The articles in the volume not (only) examine the application of international law to new technical areas of regulation, but also examine the effects of the Internet and digital technologies on the structures of international law. According to the editors: “The processes of digital transformation have profoundly influenced the actors and instruments of international relations. The mode and instruments for stabilizing the international normative order have changed significantly.”
One example is standards of proof in international courts: do tweets count as state behavior for the purposes of attribution under state responsibility? In 2020, a WTO panel gave an affirmative answer. Similarly, tweets eventually linked to the government of Armenia were submitted to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for interim measures to investigate an alleged disinformation campaign spreading ethnic hatred. Tweeting presidents can be quite dangerous for a state.
This is Prof. Kettemann’s third volume this year: in addition to the work published by Nomos Digital transformations in international law Kettemann is still publishing The law of digitality (at Routledge with Prof. Spiecker gen. Döhmann and Prof. Peukert) and Pandemic in Europe – power, parliaments and people in times of COVID-19 (at Hart with Prof. Lachmayer).
new release: Angelo Jr. Golia (ed.) Matthias C. Kettemann (ed.) Raffaela Kunz (ed.), Digital Transformations in Public International Law, Contributions to Foreign Public Law and International Law Volume 317 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2022) (open access)
special number: Golia, Angelo Jr., Matthias Kettemann, Raffaela Kunz (eds.): Special issue: “International Law and the Internet”. Journal of Foreign Public Law and International Law, Vol. 81 Issue 3, 2021, 597-886 (open access)