News from the Digital Legal Lab

Hi! Thanks for reading the monthly Digital Legal Lab newsletter, where we round up the latest news & views from our cross-university research collaboration on digital legal studies. For more information, updates and events, please visit our website.

What's new at the Digital Legal Lab

On 20 March 2023, we hosted the 3rd successful meeting of the Privacy Book Club. Together, we discussed Why Privacy Matters by Neil Richards. Join us now for our next meeting on 19 June 2023. This session's book pick is The Fight for Privacy by Danielle Keats Citron! Registration will open soon here.

Organized by Digital Legal Lab members Irene Kamara (Tilburg University) and Aurelia Tamò-Larrieux (Maastricht University), the Privacy Book Club aims to bring together researchers interested in privacy-related topics to discuss new scholarship on privacy, revisit critical theories, and debate the future of privacy. The book club welcomes everyone interested in privacy and data protection and is willing to share their thoughts with the club members.

Congratulations to Digital Legal Lab researcher Merel Noorman (Tilburg University) and her TILT colleagues Brenda Espinosa Apráez and Saskia Lavrijssen for the publication of their research paper on the use of AI in smart electricity systems and its impact on energy justice! The concept of energy justice designates that energy-related decisions should produce just outcomes. In their paper, they explored how the delegation of decision-making tasks to AI electricity systems can negatively affect energy justice and whether regulation of such systems is needed.

Belgium’s first Contract Management Day took place on 23 May 2023 in Antwerp. A range of keynote speakers guided the audience through the latest innovations in contract management. The agenda included networking opportunities, roundtables, workshops and more! Digital Legal Lab researcher professor André Janssen (Radboud University) was invited as one of the keynote speakers. He addressed the question ‘Smart contract and the law: friends or foes?’, and discussed legal issues surrounding smart contracts.

From 3-7 July 2023, Amsterdam University organises a summer course on European Platform Regulation. The course offers a deep dive into the law and policy of the ground-breaking Digital Services Act and other legislation reforming the laws for online intermediation and the digital economy. The course is taught by a variety of leading experts, including academic specialists, legal practitioners, and professionals in government and in the non-profit sector. Amongst the confirmed speakers, there are Digital Legal Lab researchers Naomi Appelman, Joris van Hoboken and Paddy Leerssen.

Don't forget to submit your abstract for Digital Legal Talks! Our annual conference is returning as a fully in-person event in Utrecht on 15 September 2023. We are absolutely delighted to announce that the keynote speaker at DLT2023 is professor Luciano Floridi, founding director of the Digital Ethics Center at Yale University. Would you like to join us in Utrecht on 15 September and discuss your work with leading law & tech researchers from across the Netherlands and beyond? We warmly welcome submissions from researchers within and outside the Digital Legal Lab.