Editor’s note: This post is part of the EJIL:Talk! Symposium on 'Expanding Human Rights Protection to Non-Human Subjects? African, Inter-American and European Perspectives.' As is well known, unlike most other international human rights instruments, the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, to give it its full title, and the Protocols thereto (hereafter, also collectively, “the Convention” or “ECHR”) provides some protection for non-human subjects in the form of “legal persons”. After all, the Convention expressly confirms, in Article 1 of its First Protocol (“Article P1-1”), that “every natural and legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions” and provides, in Article 34, for a right of individual petition to the European Court of Human Right (“the Court”) inter alia for “any … non-governmental organisation … claiming to be a victim of a violation”(as well as for “any person … or group of individuals”). Beyond these two most obvious examples, reference should also be made to the fact that, e.g., Article 10 § 1 expressly refers to “broadcasting, television…
International Law and Technology
Science, Technology, “Human” Dignity and Rules
Editor’s note: This post is part of the EJIL:Talk! Symposium on 'Expanding Human Rights Protection to Non-Human Subjects? African, Inter-American and European Perspectives.' As in previous industrial revolutions --bolstered by scientific discovery-- bold entrepreneurs seek to influence decision-makers and shape social and legal rules to achieve the precarious assembly of raw materials, energy, labour, and…
Robots and Human Rights: A Matter of Coherence?
Editor’s note: This post is part of the EJIL:Talk! Symposium on 'Expanding Human Rights Protection to Non-Human Subjects? African, Inter-American and European Perspectives.' Advocates of so-called robot rights argue for the inclusion of artificial intelligence (AI) in human rights protection from two fundamentally different perspectives. The first argument for coherence is as follows: If courts…
ChatGPT in the Classroom: Creating Spaces for Critical Reflection
Introduction (Michelle) Like many teachers of international law today, I was initially a little anxious about how to confront the challenge of AI in the classroom. Almost immediately, it was clear to me that striking an ostrich stance would not work. Joseph Weiler echoes these sentiments when he suggests that it ‘we would be…
‘An Attack on Maersk Strikes Everywhere at Once’: International law and the Political Economy of Digitalization
In June 2017, the Danish shipping giant Maersk faced a monumental crisis that highlighted both the fragility of modern digital infrastructure and the centrality of information technology to global capitalism: a targeted cyberattack against Ukraine spiraled into a worldwide outage, crippling Maersk’s information technology systems and halting operations in ports across the globe. With 4,000 servers and 45,000…