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AbstractThis article aims to characterize and compare some approaches to regulation manifest in distinct yet intersecting domains of data assemblage and algorithmic development and to explore some implications of their operating in concert. We focus on three such types of domain, each oriented toward different purposes: market jurisdictions, public science jurisdictions, and jurisdictions of humanitarianism. These domains we characterize as data jurisdictions because they tend to propagate distinct normative claims and concerns, and authorize particular types of speech and action, through algorithmic operations and data formatting. In this article, we focus on the intersection of these archetypal data jurisdictions in two related initiatives of the United Nations (UN): Haze Gazer and CycloMon. In the context of these projects, the market domain is represented by their incorporation of Twitter and social media data; the public science domain by their use of NASA Earth Observatory data, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data, and Air Quality Index China (AQICN) air quality data; and the humanitarian domain by their status as UN projects designed to serve the aims and enlarge the capacities of development and humanitarian professionals. We analyze how, and with what ramifications, these domains of algorithmic regulation intersect in Haze Gazer and CycloMon. In so doing, we advance two main arguments. First, we argue that certain normative commitments regarding data, data use, and data users circulate and gain ground through their embeddedness in seemingly benign infrastructures and formats of data handling and representation. Particular (contentious) norms are prioritized, spread, and imbibed as much through day‐to‐day data usage as through explicit argument or endorsement. Second, we argue that blind spots tend to emerge from the intersection of different jurisdictions over, or approaches to, the challenge of responsible algorithmic regulation. The data jurisdictions that we analyze in this article demand quite divergent normative commitments, but the conflicts among these are hard for users to discern in day‐to‐day interactions with the platforms that we describe. We contend that jurisdictional analysis of projects in operation may help data contributors and users take account of, and potentially take a stand on, these important differences.

AbstractMany different types of organization provide public services or goods and build public works without being, strictly speaking, part of government. Such entities tend to be seen as more innovative than government proper, both because of their organizational autonomy and because they primarily use private‐law techniques (contracts, mainly) and lay claim to private sector credentials. This article examines the presumed correlation between moves towards greater public‐private hybridity in government and public sector innovation, using illustrative examples from Ontario and British Columbia, Canada. Combining interviews with professional infrastructure deal‐makers, direct observation of public infrastructure workshops, and analyses of the documents that constitute infrastructure deals, we show that the quest to bring virtues and techniques associated with private enterprise to the delivery and governance of public goods and services often leads to a dialectical reversal. At first, bureaucratic rules do give way to the pursuit of more or less sui generis deals. But the entities that initiate deals and partnerships soon come to feel the need to standardize the process, which then leads to the return of standard templates and surprisingly rigid rules.

"Events: The Force of International Law" presents an analysis of international law, centred upon those historical and recent events in which international law has exerted, or acquired, its force. From Spanish colonization and the Peace of Westphalia, through the release of Nelson Mandela and the Rwandan genocide, and to recent international trade negotiations and the 'torture memos', each chapter in this book focuses on a specific international legal event. Short and accessible to the non-specialist reader, these chapters consider what forces are put into play when international law is invoked, as it is so frequently today, by lawyers, laypeople, or leaders. At the same time, they also reflect on what is entailed in naming these 'events' of international law and how international law grapples with their disruptive potential. Engaging economic, military, cultural, political, philosophical and technical fields, "Events: The Force of International Law" will be of interest to international lawyers and scholars of international relations, legal history, diplomatic history, war and/or peace studies, and legal theory.It is also intended to be read and appreciated by anyone familiar with appeals to international law from the general media, and curious about the limits and possibilities occasioned, or the forces mobilised, by that appeal.