This timely book untangles the digital media jurisprudence of supranational courts in Europe with a focus on the CJEU and the ECtHR. It argues that in the face of regulatory tension and uncertainty, courts can have a strong bearing on the applicable rules and standards of digital media.

This volume examines European and national higher-court decisions on social media from the perspective of fundamental rights and judicial dialogue. While the challenges social media poses for public policy and regulation have been widely discussed, the role of courts in this evolving legal area, especially from a fundamental-rights standpoint, has hitherto remained largely underexplored. This volume probes the contribution of national and European judiciaries to the protection of fundamental rights in a social media setting and delves into patterns of dialogue and interaction between domestic courts, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), and between the CJEU and the ECtHR. The book specifically examines the extent and ways in which national and European judges incorporate fundamental rights reasoning in their social media rulings. It also investigates the nature and breadth of the use of European supranational case law in domestic judicial assessment and analyses the engagement of the CJEU and the ECtHR with the other’s case law. In doing so, the book instils jurisprudential dynamics into the study of social media law and regulation, exploring in particular the effects of European constitutionalism on the shaping and enforcement of fundamental rights in a social media context. Written by emerging and established experts in the field, this book will be essential reading for scholars of comparative, European and constitutional law, as well as those with a particular interest in digital technologies and social media.

In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering, blocking, and hacking replace scissors and black ink? This book argues that only a broader understanding of censorship can effectively protect freedom of expression. For centuries, church and state controlled the content available to the public through political, moral and religious censorship. As technology evolved, the legal and political tools were refined, but the classic censorship system continued until the end of the 20th century. However, the myth of total freedom of communication and a law-free space that had been expected with the advent of the internet was soon challenged. The new rulers of the digital world, tech companies, emerged and gained enormous power over free speech and content management. All this happened alongside cautious regulation attempts on the part of various states, either by granting platforms near-total immunity (US) or by setting up new rules that were not fully developed (EU). China has established the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield as a third way. In the book, particular attention is paid to developments since the 2010s, when Internet-related problems began to multiply. The state’s solutions have mostly pointed in one direction: towards greater control of platforms and the content they host. Similarities can be found in the US debates, the Chinese and Russian positions on internet sovereignty, and the new European digital regulations (DSA-DMA). The book addresses them all. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the complexities of social media’s content regulation and moderation practices. It makes a valuable contribution to the field of freedom of expression and the internet, showing that, with different kinds of censorship, this essentially free form of communication has come – almost by default – under legal regulation and the original freedom may have been lost in too many countries in recent years.

Online content moderation is a well-known phenomenon. However, no consistent pattern exists on how it is done or how it is legally dealt with. This book addresses the complex issue of questionable content removals and account suspensions on social media platforms in the European Union, solving the existing legal ambiguity with a powerful roadmap designed to guide decision-makers in navigating online access rights and moderation issues. The roadmap’s elements are deduced from a technology-neutral comparative case law study of four Member States (Denmark, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands) based on rigorous selection criteria that highlight the most salient distinctions that characterise legal approaches to social media access and moderation. The ‘layers’ of the roadmap focus on such central issues as the following: the legal basis for social media platforms to impose restrictions; platform operators’ right to shape access, including limitations to the platform’s right to exclude users; the validity and enforceability of terms of service; and users’ and platforms’ remedies for breaches of the terms of service, including the procedural obligations in the Digital Services Act. Unlike previous work on the topic, this book does not focus on one field of law but touches upon and combines European law, constitutional and fundamental rights law, competition law, equality law, property law, and contract law, all reflected on and assessed through both a European and a national lens. By addressing these multifaceted legal aspects, it offers a holistic approach to resolving content moderation challenges and demonstrates which problems are most effectively addressed by which fields of law. The book’s roadmap can be used within the European Union to address and/or resolve any access and moderation problems on social media platforms. It will serve as a valuable resource for judges, social media platforms, and dispute resolution bodies, providing practical insights and guidance in navigating this complex landscape and streamlining decision-making processes. It will prove of immeasurable value in fostering a balanced and fair approach to content moderation in the EU that will ensure that all European users have equal opportunities for redress.

The Digital Single Market (DSM) comprised numerous Directives, Regulations, and other instruments aimed at facilitating cross-border digital services, including access to banking, shopping, streaming, and satellite television across European Union borders without restrictions. With one-fifth of service exports stemming from the digital sector, the DSM was vital for the UK, with the EU representing its largest digital services export market. Brexit and the Digital Single Market examines the important historical role of the UK in DSM development, the consequences of Brexit for the UK's digital sector, and future EU and UK policy trajectories. The book illuminates how the UK continues to innovate in the digital sector but also how it is constrained by external factors both at EU and global levels. It considers how EU policy is taking a new direction in its 2020 Digital Strategy programme which leans towards greater protection of European champions and digital sovereignty, a tightening of its data protection regime, and greater regulatory intervention in digital markets. Timely and unprecedented, Brexit and the Digital Single Market is the first volume to comprehensively cover the implications of Brexit on the EU's DSM. This is an essential read for students and academics in political science and law, as well as civil servants, regulators, and policy makers working within the digital sector.

With coverage of both traditional and critical theories and approaches to European integration and their application, this is the most comprehensive textbook on European integration theory and an essential guide for all students and scholars interested in the subject. Throughout the text, a team of leading international scholars demonstrate the current relevance of integration theory as they apply these approaches to real-world developments and crises in the contemporary European Union.

The Euro-Crisis and the legal and institutional responses to it have had important constitutional implications on the architecture of the European Union (EU). Going beyond the existing literature, Federico Fabbrini's book takes a broad look and examines how the crisis and its aftermath have changed relations of power in the EU, disaggregating three different dimensions: (1) the vertical relations of power between the member states and the EU institutions, (2) the relations of power between the political branches and the courts, and (3) the horizontal relations of power between the EU member states themselves. The first part of the book argues that, in the aftermath of the Euro-crisis, power has been shifting along each of these axes in paradoxical ways. In particular, through a comparison of the United States, Fabbrini reveals that the EU is nowadays characterized by a high degree of centralization in budgetary affairs, an unprecedented level of judicialization of economic questions, and a growing imbalance between the member states in the governance of fiscal matters. As the book makes clear, however, each of these dynamics is a cause for concern - as it calls into question important constitutional values for the EU, such as the autonomy of the member states in taking decision about taxing and spending, the preeminence of the political process in settling economic matters, and the balance between state power and state equality. The second part of the book, therefore, devises possible options for future legal and institutional developments in the EU which may revert these paradoxical trends. In particular, Fabbrini considers the ideas of raising a fiscal capacitiy, restoring the centrality of the EU legislative process, and reforming the EU executive power, and discusses the challenges that accompany any further step towards a deeper Economic and Monetary Union.

Over the past half century, western democracies have lead efforts to entrench the economic and political values of liberal democracy into the foundations of European and international public order. As this book details, the relationship between the media and the state has been at the heart of those efforts. In that relationship, often framed in constitutional principles, the liberal democratic state has celebrated the liberty to publish information and entertainment content, while also forcefully setting the limits for harmful or offensive expression. It is thus a relationship rooted in the state's need for security, authority, and legitimacy as much as liberalism's powerful arguments for economic and political freedom. In Europe, this long running endeavour has yielded a market based, liberal democratic regional order that has profound consequences for media law and policy in the member states. This book examines the economic and human rights aspects of European media law, which is not only comparatively coherent but also increasingly restrictive, rejecting alternatives that are well within the traditions of liberalism. Parallel efforts in the international sphere have been markedly less successful. In international media law, the division between trade and human rights remains largely unabridged and, in the latter field, liberal democratic concepts of free speech are influential but rarely decisive. In the international sphere states are moreover quick to assert their rights to autonomy. Nonetheless, the current communications revolution has overturned fundamental assumptions about the media and the state around the world, eroding the boundaries between domestic and foreign media as well as mass and personal communication. European and International Media Law sets legal and policy developments in the context of this fast changing, globalized media and communications sector.

A rich and gripping account of the challenges of transnational legal mobilization against an authoritarian regime engaged in state violence.

Are the courts our friend or our foe? This book has three parts: Part I considers the case for judicial independence Part II looks at the question 'Is judicial independence under threat?' Part III reflects on whether judicial independence be defended and protected. Prompted by the constitutional crisis following the referendum of 2016, the Foundation for Law Justice and Society convened the second Putney Debates. Now convened on an annual basis, they provide a forum each year for the discussion of matters of constitutional importance. The original Putney Debates were held in St Mary's Church, Putney in 1647. The Civil War had been won, the King was held prisoner, the New Model Army was in control. In late October of that year, the weekly meeting of the High Council of the New Model Army, under the chairmanship of Oliver Cromwell, together with several civilians, turned into a debate about the constitution. This is perhaps the only occasion in modern history that a constitutional convention has been held on the English constitution.