Roxana Vatanparast | Capital University Law School (original) (raw)

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Papers by Roxana Vatanparast

The global data economy has become an integral part of the global economy. It plays a fundamental... more The global data economy has become an integral part of the global economy. It plays a fundamental role in issues of economic distribution and inequality, which has much to do with the legal arrangements and entitlements that shape it. Yet data and data-driven technologies are often conceptualized in terms that do not seem adequate to capture the role they play in global distribution, or which overlook the law as a key mechanism shaping distributional outcomes. Using a law and political economy approach, this article argues that conceiving of data as capital that is coded by legal mechanisms allows new ways of imagining alternative distributions of the value it generates in the global economy today. The article maps some of the legal entitlements that shape the global data economy and its distributive effects, as well as proposals for alternatives. It concludes that analyses of the distributive effects of the global data economy ought to take into account the fundamental roles that b...

Heidelberg Journal of International Law, 2020

Data collection and processing have been subject to considerable controversy in recent years, spa... more Data collection and processing have been subject to considerable controversy in recent years, sparking many debates and governance projects. One such governance project is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Since becoming effective, the GDPR has come to represent a “global standard” for privacy and data protection. Yet, the idea that the GDPR represents a global standard overlooks broader questions about the interaction between law, technology, and society.

Using co-production as a conceptual lens, this paper argues that the GDPR reflects at least three social shifts, each of which is entangled with the others. Along with these social shifts, the GDPR is also co-producing ideas of what privacy is and ought to be, and who gets the authority to interpret and construct it. Moreover, the GDPR reconstructs political subjects into data subjects, with significant depoliticising and disempowering effects. Ultimately, the GDPR does more to serve the interests of informational capitalism than to challenge it. Locally situated political engagement can provide a way to counter the disempowering effects of the GDPR as a global standard for marginalised people in the Global South, as this article explores in the context of India’s new data protection bill.

Harvard International Law Journal Frontiers, 2020

While much legal scholarship relating to data collection and processing has focused on individual... more While much legal scholarship relating to data collection and processing has focused on individual privacy and autonomy, far less attention has been paid to the environmental impacts of data. In this contribution, we highlight a phenomenon we call “data waste,” or the carbon emissions, natural resource extraction, production of waste, and other harmful environmental impacts directly or indirectly attributable to data-driven infrastructures. These include platform-based business models, the programming and use of AI systems, and blockchain-based technologies.

We describe data-driven infrastructures as reflecting an ideology of permissionless innovation and as producing network effects that tend toward monopolization. We then explain how these factors have shaped data-driven infrastructures’ impact on the climate. Next, we discuss how law and legal institutions have facilitated these developments and call for a more systemic understanding of the factors contributing to data waste. We end with a call to frame the issue of data waste as a sociotechnical controversy that raises broader questions about the power dynamics that underlie data-driven infrastructures and the need to imagine alternatives.

Harvard International Law Journal Frontiers, 2020

This short article foregrounds the material infrastructure underlying the global data economy to ... more This short article foregrounds the material infrastructure underlying the global data economy to highlight its entanglement with technological, legal, and social orders. It traces how cables helped shape political thought in the nineteenth century and were in turn shaped by imperial dynamics. Then it discusses the material turn in international law and how it provides ways for reimagining international law’s effects on everyday life. Finally, it discusses how cables have become sites where power and contestation play out, the relationship of international law to undersea cables, and how they have mutually shaped each other. It ends with some thoughts on denaturalizing the relationship between undersea cables, international law, and the global data economy.

The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community by Fritjof Capra and ... more The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community by Fritjof Capra and Ugo Mattei calls for a groundbreaking shift in legal theory by applying systems thinking to the law. The authors critique the dominant Western conceptualization of the law as a mechanistic order that developed over time to primarily serve the interests of capital. Capra and Mattei argue instead for a transformation of the legal order to a generative one that serves people, nature, and ecological communities.

This chapter analyses the concept and suggested content of a contemporary jus post bellum legal f... more This chapter analyses the concept and suggested content of a contemporary jus post bellum legal framework through the lens of critical legal and political theory. The chapter’s central argument is that jus post bellum is characterized by a series of ambiguities, contradictions, and problems which seriously weaken arguments in favor of formalizing jus post bellum principles in a body of law. The chapter also argues that the creation of a new jus post bellum body of law may not be necessary, and may in effect have unintended consequences that are contrary to both the foundational aspirations of jus post bellum and humanitarian ideals. While this chapter argues against formalizing jus post bellum principles in a body of law, it concludes that jus post bellum may be a useful (theoretical) concept in the international legal discourse.

The United States claims that Iran's uranium enrichment program is for the purpose of creating nu... more The United States claims that Iran's uranium enrichment program is for the purpose of creating nuclear weapons, and is thus in violation of the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Although the question of whether Iran has, or will soon have, a nuclear weapon is still speculative, the U.S. is adamant that even if Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon, it soon will, and all measures must be taken to prevent that from happening. This note analyzes whether the preemptive use of force in this context would meet traditional customary international law requirements as originally established in the Caroline Affair - namely, necessity and proportionality. This note also identifies the flaws in the preemptive use of force doctrine as a whole, as exemplified in its invocation before the Iraq War.

The global data economy has become an integral part of the global economy. It plays a fundamental... more The global data economy has become an integral part of the global economy. It plays a fundamental role in issues of economic distribution and inequality, which has much to do with the legal arrangements and entitlements that shape it. Yet data and data-driven technologies are often conceptualized in terms that do not seem adequate to capture the role they play in global distribution, or which overlook the law as a key mechanism shaping distributional outcomes. Using a law and political economy approach, this article argues that conceiving of data as capital that is coded by legal mechanisms allows new ways of imagining alternative distributions of the value it generates in the global economy today. The article maps some of the legal entitlements that shape the global data economy and its distributive effects, as well as proposals for alternatives. It concludes that analyses of the distributive effects of the global data economy ought to take into account the fundamental roles that b...

Heidelberg Journal of International Law, 2020

Data collection and processing have been subject to considerable controversy in recent years, spa... more Data collection and processing have been subject to considerable controversy in recent years, sparking many debates and governance projects. One such governance project is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Since becoming effective, the GDPR has come to represent a “global standard” for privacy and data protection. Yet, the idea that the GDPR represents a global standard overlooks broader questions about the interaction between law, technology, and society.

Using co-production as a conceptual lens, this paper argues that the GDPR reflects at least three social shifts, each of which is entangled with the others. Along with these social shifts, the GDPR is also co-producing ideas of what privacy is and ought to be, and who gets the authority to interpret and construct it. Moreover, the GDPR reconstructs political subjects into data subjects, with significant depoliticising and disempowering effects. Ultimately, the GDPR does more to serve the interests of informational capitalism than to challenge it. Locally situated political engagement can provide a way to counter the disempowering effects of the GDPR as a global standard for marginalised people in the Global South, as this article explores in the context of India’s new data protection bill.

Harvard International Law Journal Frontiers, 2020

While much legal scholarship relating to data collection and processing has focused on individual... more While much legal scholarship relating to data collection and processing has focused on individual privacy and autonomy, far less attention has been paid to the environmental impacts of data. In this contribution, we highlight a phenomenon we call “data waste,” or the carbon emissions, natural resource extraction, production of waste, and other harmful environmental impacts directly or indirectly attributable to data-driven infrastructures. These include platform-based business models, the programming and use of AI systems, and blockchain-based technologies.

We describe data-driven infrastructures as reflecting an ideology of permissionless innovation and as producing network effects that tend toward monopolization. We then explain how these factors have shaped data-driven infrastructures’ impact on the climate. Next, we discuss how law and legal institutions have facilitated these developments and call for a more systemic understanding of the factors contributing to data waste. We end with a call to frame the issue of data waste as a sociotechnical controversy that raises broader questions about the power dynamics that underlie data-driven infrastructures and the need to imagine alternatives.

Harvard International Law Journal Frontiers, 2020

This short article foregrounds the material infrastructure underlying the global data economy to ... more This short article foregrounds the material infrastructure underlying the global data economy to highlight its entanglement with technological, legal, and social orders. It traces how cables helped shape political thought in the nineteenth century and were in turn shaped by imperial dynamics. Then it discusses the material turn in international law and how it provides ways for reimagining international law’s effects on everyday life. Finally, it discusses how cables have become sites where power and contestation play out, the relationship of international law to undersea cables, and how they have mutually shaped each other. It ends with some thoughts on denaturalizing the relationship between undersea cables, international law, and the global data economy.

The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community by Fritjof Capra and ... more The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community by Fritjof Capra and Ugo Mattei calls for a groundbreaking shift in legal theory by applying systems thinking to the law. The authors critique the dominant Western conceptualization of the law as a mechanistic order that developed over time to primarily serve the interests of capital. Capra and Mattei argue instead for a transformation of the legal order to a generative one that serves people, nature, and ecological communities.

This chapter analyses the concept and suggested content of a contemporary jus post bellum legal f... more This chapter analyses the concept and suggested content of a contemporary jus post bellum legal framework through the lens of critical legal and political theory. The chapter’s central argument is that jus post bellum is characterized by a series of ambiguities, contradictions, and problems which seriously weaken arguments in favor of formalizing jus post bellum principles in a body of law. The chapter also argues that the creation of a new jus post bellum body of law may not be necessary, and may in effect have unintended consequences that are contrary to both the foundational aspirations of jus post bellum and humanitarian ideals. While this chapter argues against formalizing jus post bellum principles in a body of law, it concludes that jus post bellum may be a useful (theoretical) concept in the international legal discourse.

The United States claims that Iran's uranium enrichment program is for the purpose of creating nu... more The United States claims that Iran's uranium enrichment program is for the purpose of creating nuclear weapons, and is thus in violation of the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Although the question of whether Iran has, or will soon have, a nuclear weapon is still speculative, the U.S. is adamant that even if Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon, it soon will, and all measures must be taken to prevent that from happening. This note analyzes whether the preemptive use of force in this context would meet traditional customary international law requirements as originally established in the Caroline Affair - namely, necessity and proportionality. This note also identifies the flaws in the preemptive use of force doctrine as a whole, as exemplified in its invocation before the Iraq War.