About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

25 Chi. J. Int'l L. 417 (2024-2025)
Anchoring Digital Sovereignty

handle is hein.journals/cjil25 and id is 425 raw text is: Anchoring Digital Sovereignty Vivek Krishnamurthy* Abstract For a quarter-century, a consensus has prevailed that territorial sovereignfy applies online as it does offine. Since practically all the Internet's infrastructure and its billions of users reside on the territoy of states, conventional wisdom holds that sovereignty must extend to yberspace. Such accounts ignore how people experience yberspace as a distinctive place, and how current international law lacks safeguards to prevent states from exercising their sovereignty to splinter the Internet into a set of national networks. Territorial sovereignty is also hard to square with pledges by the worlds democracies to keep theInternetfree, open, andglobal;yet it is not the only way that international law knows to define the powers of a state. Drawing from the law of the sea, this Article argues that we should anchor the nature of state authority in cyberspace in the limited sovereign rights that coastal states possess in the waters of ftheir shores. Unlike the plena ypowers that sovereignty vests in states over their entire land territory, a coastal states sovereign rghts weaken the further one goes out to sea, and they are subject to the riglts of other states (and of their nationals) to engage in certain peaceful uses of such iaters. By redefining state authority over yberspace in terms of layers of sovereign rights that are subjectt o the digital rights of others, states can enact legitimate online regulations within international legalc onstraints thatpreserve the Internet's free, open, andglobal character. Associate Professor, University of Colorado Law School; Faculty Associate, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University. Many thanks to Myka Kollmann and Sebastian Blitt for their outstanding research assistance; to S. James Anaya, Mailyn Fidler, Asaf Lubin, Cymie Paine, Blake Reid, Donald Rothwell, and Peter Swire for their feedback on previous versions of this Article; to participants at the 2022 Four Societies Conference, the 2024 Law & Tech Workshop Series, and internal workshops at the Universities of Ottawa and Colorado for their insights; and to Regina Bateson, Anupam Chander, David Sloss, Rich Furman, Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Margot Kaminski, Molly Land, Marina Pavlovid, Lisa Hanasono, and Penelope Simons for their guidance and support. Any remaining errors of fact or law are mine alone.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most