A presentation by Aziz Z. Huq, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, University of Chicago. This event is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium under the "Algorithmic Fairness for Asylum Seekers and Refugees" cluster hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights and co-organised by Dr. Mirko Đuković, Centre for Fundamental Rights, and Prof. Cathryn Costello, Centre for Fundamental Rights and University College Dublin.
Contemporary regulation of digital technologies by nation-states unfolds under a darkening shadow of geopolitical competition. The United States government operates simultaneously in a domestic political environment dominated by oligopolistic firms competing to expand, and in an international political environment wherein it competes with other sovereign nations by cultivating and deploying digital technological capacities for geostrategic ends. Owing to the ensuing cross-cutting pressures, national and supranational regulation can take on surprisingly reticulated, even baroque or perverse, forms. Three recent monographs offer illuminating and complementary maps of these geopolitical conflicts and the national responses to digital technologies upon which they rest. One proposes an ambitious, synoptic account of how geopolitical dynamics unfold: This is, impressively, the only genuinely all-embracing account of the field on offer at the moment. The other two books develop more narrowly drawn arguments focused on specific regulatory dynamics. These are useful, but more limited in scope. Folding together insights from all three books, however, opens up a pathway toward a new, more perspicacious understanding of geopolitical dynamics, and hence the most likely future of digital regulation. The analysis suggests grounds for scepticism about the emergence of a deep regulatory equilibrium centred on European norms. While regulatory regimes may converge on common solutions, the convergence reflects no European hegemony.
Aziz Z. Huq is a scholar of US and comparative constitutional law. His recent work concerns democratic backsliding and the regulation of AI. His award-winning scholarship is published in several books and in leading law, social science, and political science journals. Before joining the Law School faculty, Professor Huq was counsel and then director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Project, litigating cases in both the US Courts of Appeals and the Supreme Court. As a Senior Consultant Analyst for the International Crisis Group, he researched and wrote on constitutional design and implementation in Pakistan, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka. He was a law clerk for Judge Robert D. Sack of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States. He is also a 1996 summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a 2001 graduate of Columbia Law School where he was awarded the John Ordronaux Prize (for the student graduating first in their class).
The 2025 spring semester colloquium is co-hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights and the research project "AFAR: Algorithmic Fairness for Asylum Seekers and Refugees", funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. This 4-year collaborative research, investigates the use of new technologies in migration and asylum governance. The research colloquium is co-organised by Dr. Mirko Đuković, Centre for Fundamental Rights, and Prof. Cathryn Costello, Centre for Fundamental Rights and University College Dublin. There are 28 students entitled to the certificate of colloquium.
Prior registration is required. Registered attendees will receive the dial-in details prior to the event. Please register here.