Emancipating the Mind in the New Era--Bulletin of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics: The Self-Reflexive Imaginaries of Law: Essays on Contemporary ... of Algorithmic Law and Platform Governance

Book Synopsis: The seven essays in this issue explore the ways that this movement from the sovereign legal to plural legalities-that is from the formal, qualitative, and public expression of command, to its insinuation into the practices, habits, and expectations of collective bodies-have become deeply embedded each in the other. One speaks here of union that produces new forms of managing individuals and in the process reshaping the institutions developed for that purpose. In the process the legal becomes both more variegated and diffuse. The essays are organized in two parts. The three essays of the first, The Condition of Law, consider the modalities of insinuation of disciplinary legalities alongside, beneath, and within the traditional architecture of law its public institutions. The first suggests the structures of weaving between the old orthodox national legal orders and emerging plural legalities. The second considers how this weaving is manifested in the governance behaviors of the institutions of the Norwegian Pension Fund Global. The third focuses on the way that interpretation changes to suit the times and the memories of those who then apply them to interpret the norms and rules of collective organizations. The four essays in the second part, Algorithmic Law and Platform Governance, suggest the ways that the condition of law is further shaped by the modalities used to0 express and apply it. The first considers the way in which democracy is quantified by private actors. The second examines 4 inter-related stories: (1) disciplining of Jack Ma; (2) completion of the first cycle of data protection and cybersecurity laws in China; (3) detachment of data services from Ant; (4) glimmerings of parallel developments in the contest between Australia and Facebook. The third essay considers forms of quantitative corruption by considering the way that data was corrupted in the production of World Bank reporting efforts, in the course of which data was manipulated for the benefit of certain states. The last essay considers the regulatory application of 'wokeness' in China by considering recent Chinese efforts to report online expression that violates community standards, and the regulation of algorithmically based recommendations systems.