Meaning of a Global Perspective

"International regimes are defined as principles, norms, rules, and decision making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue-area. As a starting point, regimes have been conceptualized as intervening variables, standing between basic causal factors and related outcomes and behavior. There are three views about the importance of regimes: conventional structural orientations dismiss regimes as being at best ineffectual; Grotian orientations view regimes as an intimate component of the international system; and modified structural perspectives see regimes as significant only under certain constrained conditions. For Grotian and modified structuralist arguments, which endorse the view that regimes can influence outcomes and behavior, regime development is seen as a function of five basic causal variables: egoistic self-interest, political power, diffuse norms and principles, custom and usage, and knowledge."

The Declaration, adopted by the specialized mandates tasked with protecting Freedom of Expression at the UN, OAS, OSCE, and African Commission, was drafted in cooperation with ARTICLE 19 and the Centre for Law and Democracy. The Declaration “outlines the interrelationship and interdependency of media freedom and democratic values, and the critical role of media freedom in enabling and sustaining democratic societies.” In the three sections that follow, the Declaration focuses on the role of states, calling for state actors to protect journalists and media diversity, refrain from press freedom violations, and provide economic support to the media. In its recommendations for online platforms, the Declaration emphasizes human rights standards, transparency, risk mitigation, and fair compensation. Finally, it addresses the media sector and stresses the importance of professional and ethical conduct.

Executive Summary: This Guide provides an overview of how international law can be used to inform domestic litigation, with a focus on the issue of freedom of expression. After providing a brief overview of the sources of applicable international law norms, it provides an overview of how different jurisdictions give effect to international norms while offering practical tips for deciding how and when to invoke those norms. The Guide then describes the ways international standards can be used as a tool to inform statutory and constitutional interpretation. The Guide concludes that although different legal traditions have adopted varied approaches to incorporating international norms domestically, regardless of how this is done, international standards can play a meaningful role in domestic human rights litigation.

This paper aims to identify practical measures to ensure beneficial cross-border data flows continue while addressing the risks they pose. It emphasizes the importance of commercial privacy and trusted government access in achieving trust. A trusted framework for cross-border data flows must be open to democracies operating under the rule of law, rights-protective, practicable, and scalable. The framework should provide meaningful privacy safeguards enforced through effective accountability mechanisms, be achievable by democracies that respect the rule of law, and be scalable to keep up with rapid global change. The paper suggests stakeholders should initiate a multilateral, transparent process that focuses on commercial privacy and trusted government access.

"The conceptual, and more recently empirical, study of compliance has become a central preoccupation, and perhaps the fastest growing subfield, in international legal scholarship. The authors seek to question this trend. They argue that looking at the aspirations of international law through the lens of rule compliance leads to inadequate scrutiny and understanding of the diverse complex purposes and projects that multiple actors impose and transpose on international legality, and especially a tendency to oversimplify if not distort the relation of inter-national law to politics. Citing a range of examples from different areas of international law – ranging widely from international trade and investment to international criminal and humanitarian law – the authors seek to show how the concept of compliance (especially viewed as rule observance) is inadequate for understanding how international law has normative effects. A fundamental flaw of compliance studies is that they abstract from the problem of interpretation: interpretation is pervasively determinative of what happens to legal rules when they are out in the world, yet ‘compliance’ studies begin with the notion that there is a stable and agreed meaning to a rule, and we need merely to observe whether it is obeyed."

“The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes important transparency and accountability requirements on different actors who process personal data. This is great news for the protection of individual data privacy. However, given that “personal information and human stories are the raw material of journalism,” what does the GDPR mean for freedom of expression and especially for journalistic activity? This essay argues that, although EU states seem to have taken their data protection obligations under the GDPR seriously, efforts to balance this against the right to freedom of expression have been more uneven. The essay concludes that it is of key importance to ensure that the GDPR's safeguards for data privacy do not compromise a free press.”

"Constructing the World Polity brings together in one collection the theoretical ideas of one of the most influential International Relations theorists of our time. These essays, with a new introduction, and comprehensive connective sections, present Ruggie's ideas and their application to critical policy questions of the post-Cold War international order. Themes covered include:* International Organization. How the 'new Institutionalism' differs from the old. The System of States. Explorations of political structure, social time, and territorial space in the world polity. Making History. America and the issue of 'agency' in the post-Cold Was era. NATO and the future transatlantic security community. The United Nations and the collective use of force."

The Declaration jointly developed by Access Now, ARTICLE 19, Mnemonic, the Center for Democracy and Technology, JustPeace Labs, Digital Security Lab Ukraine, Centre for Democracy and Rule of Law (CEDEM), and the Myanmar Internet Project, sets out guidelines to help platforms protect human rights before, during, and after a crisis. The motivation for the Declaration stemmed from an understanding that “[i]n situations of armed conflicts and other crises, people use social media and messaging platforms to document human rights abuses or war crimes, access information, mobilize for action, and crowdsource humanitarian assistance. But governments and other actors leverage these same platforms to spread disinformation and hate speech, incite violence, and attack or surveil activists, journalists, and dissidents.” The partner organizations hope that the Declaration will help “advance consistent and rights-respecting principles for companies to respond appropriately to crises and meet their obligations and responsibilities under international human rights law.”

"The present report is submitted pursuant to General Assembly resolution 76/227. In it, the Secretary-General describes the challenges posed by disinformation and the responses to it, sets out the relevant international legal framework and discusses measures that States and technology enterprises reported to have taken to counter disinformation. The Secretary-General notes that countering the different manifestations of disinformation requires addressing underlying societal tensions, fostering respect for human rights, online and offline, and supporting a plural civic space and media landscape."

“In this public talk hosted by the Center for Media, Data and Society at the CEU School of Public Policy, UN Special Rapporteur David Kaye discussed global threats to freedom of expression. He was introduced by Sejal Parmar, Assistant Professor at the CEU Department of Legal Studies. The agenda of the talk and themes discussed in his lecture and in the ensuing Q&A spanned the following: global threats to freedom of expression; how to promote protective measures to free speech, hate speech and access to information; protection of whistleblowers; role and liability of intermediaries and social media companies; surveillance; digital security; transparency; the Bernstein case, Apple v. FBI; code speech; different national security measures on freedom of expression, and the UN standard on the issue; Facebook posts as reasons for prosecution for incitement; Article 19; the right to be forgotten; content discrimination in relation to freedom of expression; Article 19 to promote government transparency and access to information; the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction Movement and its academic implications; academic freedom; how the Special Rapporteur prioritizes over requests and communications; and, contempt of court in relation to freedom of expression.”