Module overview
This module introduces you to the comparative law methodology in the substantive context of ‘internet law’. As the internet has blurred jurisdictional boundaries and confronted states with their clashing legal normativities, it provides a fertile field for comparative law. Why can Europe and the US with many common cultural roots not agree on a common perspective on freedom of expression or privacy? What lies behind the First Amendment’s absolutism and how ‘absolute’ is it in fact? Equally, what are the cultural foundations of the legal insistence in Europe on privacy-in-public and online civility? Taking it a step further, how are Western foundational norms, such as free expression or privacy, received in collectivist cultures in the East? The module engages with some of the most pressing questions that the international community has faced on how the internet as a (global) public good should or should not be regulated.