The Jurisprudence of Digital Transformations (21st Century)
Talya leads the work on the sixth body of jurisprudence, in which we track legal and regulatory responses to digital transformations, which give expression to the idea of an inner self. This work also opens up opportunities for more normative work, primarily on AI and neurotechnology and their integration with human beings.
01
Neurotechnology: Legal and Regulatory Responses
A core case study for the sixth body of jurisprudence is neurotechnology. We are interested in understanding what the legal and regulatory responses to these technological developments reveal about understandings of the inner self in the social background.
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Talya has been working on several themes and issues within this area. An especially novel aspect of her work in this body of jurisprudence is her use of insights from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). In this open access publication, Talya explains how this methodology can help lawyers better understand and address the challenges of socio-technical transformations.
Using neurotechnology as a case study, Talya is interested in exploring the legally-mandated boundaries between inner and outer as well as more generally between person and thing. She has presented emerging work on this topic at several conferences including the Bridging the Gap Between Neurorights and Cyberights Conference, Sant’ Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa on 22nd March 2024.
In her work to date, Talya has paid particular attention to neurohacking and its implications for personality rights. She has recently completed a paper on this topic having presented an earlier version of it at the Beyond Boundaries: Persons, (Bio)Technologies, & the Law Workshop, which took place on 2nd & 3rd October 2023 at Gladstone's Library in Wales. This paper is currently under review at an international journal and we will provide a link to it here once it is published.​
02
Enlightened Remembering and the Paradox of Forgetting
Patrick has analysed how legal discourse gives expression to the relationship between remembering and forgetting, two core aspects of the inner self. Applying the transhistorical and interdisciplinary methodologies of the project, Patrick built on insights from a famous medieval text, Dante's Divine Comedy, in constructing a normative argument about how we should understand the relationship between remembering and forgetting in law and policy. The resulting paper, ‘Enlightened Remembering and the Paradox of Forgetting: From Dante to Data Privacy’, was published in Law and Humanities in 2023 and is open access here.
03
Privacy as Mental Integrity in the Context of Socio-Technological Developments
Working with Bethany Shiner (associate scholar in our project), Patrick has applied the project's transhistorical methodology to trace the evolution of privacy law in the common law across several bodies of jurisprudence, arguing that a narrative of privacy as mental integrity is emerging in the context of the socio-technological developments of the sixth body of jurisprudence.
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Patrick presented an earlier version of this paper at the Privacy Law Symposium, University of Manchester on the 9th May 2023. The paper will feature in The Law and Ethics of Freedom of Thought (edited by Blitz & Bublitz and published by Palgrave Macmillan), which will be published later this year or early 2025.
04
Generative AI and the Inner Self
B​​uilding a bridge between the fifth and sixth bodies of jurisprudence, Felicitas expands her research on human rights and freedom of thought to questions regarding digital transformations. In March 2024 at the Annual Conference of the Socio-Legal Studies Association, she presented a draft paper on Generative Artificial Intelligence and how this relates to legal concepts of personality and inner self
