SRI Seminar Series: Aziz Huq

Our weekly SRI Seminar Series welcomes Aziz Huq, a scholar of US and comparative constitutional law at the University of Chicago whose recent work concerns democratic backsliding and the regulation of AI. In this talk, Huq will explore how contemporary pressures of geopolitical competition are influencing the regulation of digital technologies by nation-states, and what this means for the future of international political cooperation and governance.

Talk title: “The geopolitics of digital regulation”

Abstract: Contemporary regulation of digital technologies by nation-states unfolds under a darkening shadow of growing geopolitical competition. So the United States moves simultaneously in a domestic political environment dominated by oligopolistic firms competing to expand, and also in an international political environment where it is competing with other sovereign nations in cultivating and deploying digital technological capacities for geostrategic ends.

Thanks to the ensuing cross-cutting pressures, national and supranational regulation can take on surprisingly reticulated, even baroque and perverse, forms and channels. Three recent monographs offer illuminating, and complementary, maps of these geopolitical conflicts over and national responses to digital technologies. One proposes an ambitious, synoptic account of how geopolitical dynamics unfold—impressively, the only genuinely all-embracing coup d’oeil on offer at the moment. The other two tender more narrowly drawn perspectives on specific dynamics: useful, but limited in scope. Folding together insights from all three books, however, opens up a pathway toward a more perspicacious understanding of geopolitical dynamics, and the most likely future of digital regulation.

This analysis suggests there is no straightforward path to a deep regulatory equilibrium centered on European norms. Rather, any regulatory convergence will be superficial, a thin epidermis stretched tight over bipolar geostrategic conflict of increasing instability.

About the speaker

Aziz Z. Huq is the Frank and Bernice J. Professor at the University of Chicago Law School and associate professor in the sociology department. Huq is a scholar of US and comparative constitutional law, with his recent work concerning democratic backsliding and the regulation of AI. Before teaching, he represented civil liberties claimants with the Brennan Center for Justice, and worked for the International Crisis Group in Afghanistan, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Huq’s books include How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (with Tom Ginsburg, University of Chicago Press, 2018), The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies (Oxford University Press, 2021), and The Rule of Law: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2024). His work on AI and constitutionalism has been published in the Harvard Law Review, Daedalus, and several other leading scholarly venues. He also writes for Politico, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and many other non-specialist publications. Huq has an active pro bono practice, and is on the board of the American Constitution Society, the Seminary Coop, the New Press, and the ACLU of Illinois.

About the SRI Seminar Series

The SRI Seminar Series brings together the Schwartz Reisman community and beyond for a robust exchange of ideas that advance scholarship at the intersection of technology and society. Seminars are led by a leading or emerging scholar and feature extensive discussion.

To register for all seminar events in the Fall 2024 season, please contact us directly at sri.research@utoronto.ca.

About the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society is a research institute at the University of Toronto that explores the ethical and societal implications of technology. Our mission is to deepen knowledge of technologies, societies, and humanity by integrating research across traditional boundaries to build human-centred solutions.

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