Regulation

Regulation is at the core of how modern states in a range of jurisdictions seek to govern the activities of individual citizens as well as corporate and governmental actors. Broadly defined it includes the use of legal and non-legal techniques to manage social and economic risks. Traditionally regulation is associated with prescriptive law, public agencies and criminal as well as administrative sanctions. But the politics of the shrinking state and deregulation, as well as re-regulation in the context of the climate crisis and public health crises, such as Covid-19, have meant that intrusive and blunt forms of legal regulation have given way at times to facilitative, reflexive and procedural law which seeks to balance public and private interests in regulatory regimes. Enduring policy debates address whether there is actually too much, too little or the wrong type of regulation in different public policy areas.

This course examines what role various forms of law and regulatory strategies play in contemporary regulatory regimes, and how these become increasingly transformed through innovative technologies, including AI and machine learning. It thereby analyses how regulation both by humans and technologies constructs specific relationships between law and society, and thus how legal regulation is involved in mediating conflicts between private and public power.

Assessment is by way of a submission.