Big Data and International Law

Abstract

It has become a truism that data are now bigger than ever before: that is, information assembled and “used for reference, analysis, and calculation,” especially in digital form, has increased in volume, variety, and velocity to unprecedented levels, “to the extent that [their] manipulation and management present significant . . . challenges” (OED Online, s.v. “data (n.),” and “big (adj., adv.)”). In the international legal field, scholarly interest is growing in the phenomenon of “big data”—used here in the singular, as a mass noun—and what it might mean in and for international legal institutions and international legal work. For the most part, however, that scholarship is being pursued under auspices other than “Big Data and International Law.” Moreover, given the diversity of data types, analytical techniques, and technological settings evoked by the term big data, it is unclear that any subfield so named could acquire or retain coherence. International legal scholarship attentive to the implications of data’s digitization and the impact of digital technologies just as often travels under the rubrics of (international) law and technology, algorithmic governance, or, more recently, artificial intelligence and international law. Nonetheless, this bibliography assembles works representative of this burgeoning scholarship that are likely to be helpful to those interested in big data and international law. It mostly sidesteps areas that are, or are becoming, fields in their own right, to which big data is critical, but which are not especially attentive to its role; for example: the law of privacy; the international law of cyberwarfare and automated weaponry; the international law of distributed ledger technologies (for example, blockchain) and digital currencies; the private international law of smart contracting, digital dispute resolution, and digital risk protection; and international space law. This bibliography includes work by scholars who identify as public international lawyers and writings that cannot be so described, by which international legal scholars interested in big data might nevertheless be usefully informed. Also included are works that take a comparative and/or transnational approach to the analysis of legal issues for big data and big data issues for law. The headings proceed, more or less, from the introductory to the specialized. Earlier references tend to foreground discipline-wide dilemmas and shifts. Later, the bibliography highlights some key subfields in which inquiries surrounding big data and international law are proliferating, including in the conduct of international legal research. This bibliography is indicative, not exhaustive.