The Legal Roots of Social Intelligence and the Challenges of the Information Revolution

The paper traces current research on social intelligence back to the everlasting debate on the sources of law and the formalization of social, as opposed to individual, intelligence as the binding force of social customs. After the crisis of the Westphalian model, the legal role of social intelligence can be appreciated nowadays in accordance with new forms of customary and transnational law, much as social norms that a myriad of communities have developed online. Since rearrangements of the legal sources are intertwined with distributions of power, however, what is especially at stake today concerns the sovereign claim to regulate extraterritorial conduct, much as imposing norms on individuals that have no say in the decisions affecting them, through the mechanisms of design, code, and architecture. Current tussles on the future of the internet and its governance show that it would be deadly wrong to take today’s legal role of social intelligence for granted.