Under review
Abstract: This article revisits the current international law debates on cyber sovereignty through a Marxist state-theoretic lens. While existing scholarship has largely focused on doctrinal disagreements over the legal status of sovereignty in cyberspace, it offers little explanation for their persistence. This article argues that the competing positions—ranging from the ‘pure sovereignty’ position to the ‘sovereignty as a principle’ position—reflect a contradictory imperative for the capitalist state. On the one hand, states must guarantee stability and predictability for capital by protecting digital property relations and securing critical infrastructure; on the other hand, they must facilitate capital’s boundless thirst for expansion through the free digital circulation of money and commodities across the globe. The enduring ambiguity surrounding cyber sovereignty thus mirrors contradictory imperatives embedded in the capitalist state system. The article concludes by reflecting on the limited emancipatory potential of international law in challenging oppressive digital infrastructures.
Abstract: International law is often invoked as a central tool in the struggle for climate justice—a coupling that sits uneasily with international law’s role in the expansion and reproduction of the fossil-fuelled capitalist economy that produced the crisis in the first place. This article explores this tension by bringing Alyssa Battistoni’s account of nature as a ‘free gift’ within the capitalist social form into conversation with Evgeny Pashukanis’s commodity-form theory of law. It argues that because the climate system remains external to the value form, and the legal form carries a categorical symmetry with the latter, the climate system can only appear in law through its translation into forms compatible with property and exchange—the basic premises of capitalism. The article concludes that such translation ultimately risks reproducing the market logics that produced the crisis in the first place, and that international climate law is therefore unlikely to deliver the transformative change necessary to achieve climate justice. The transformation necessary for a sustainable planetary future consequently requires forms of political struggle that exceed the boundaries of the legal form.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Abstract: The article examines how virtual groups can trigger an armed conflict, and thus, the application of international humanitarian law (ihl). The emergence of non-State actors as central players in cyberspace, together with the increasing use of cyber operations in conflicts, makes the regulation of non-State actors in armed conflicts a topical issue. The triggering provisions in ihl require a level of organization of non-State groups, which do not necessarily resonate with the realities among virtual groups. To determine if the triggering provisions allow for a reinterpretation to fit better the potentially differently structured virtual groups, the article scrutinizes the legal bases for the organization requirements in the respective provisions and identities the underlying rationales. The article concludes that the legal bases for the organization requirement in the three provisions are distinct, but that none of them currently allows for reinterpretation.
Published as a book chapter in: International law in Cyberspace: The Nordic Perspective, Leiden: Brill (2025)
Abstract: One of the most striking aspects of cyberspace is the diffusion of power to the individual. Even a single person can, from the comfort of their own home, cause considerable harm to States on the other side of the globe. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, both belligerent States have successfully deployed novel techniques for the mobilization of individuals in cyberspace. The absence of geographical boundaries in cyberspace triggers important questions regarding the international legal implications for States whose territories are being used for such operations. To assess how the legal framework stands the test of reality, this article examines the possible international legal obligations of non-participating States hosting individuals conducting malicious cyber operations against Russia orchestrated by the IT Army of Ukraine. After a legal characterization of the activities of the IT Army, this article scrutinizes the legal norms conferring obligations on territorial States and accounts for the prevailing ambiguities surrounding their application. The principle of due diligence entails an obligation for States to not allow their territories to be used for cyber operations affecting the rights of, and producing serious adverse consequences for, other States. Special challenges surround the assessment in the context of an armed conflict; the status of a State as an aggressor entails important nuances to the prima facie rights of the State. Based on an analysis of how the legal framework applies to the activities of the IT Army of Ukraine, the article concludes that for non-participating States, the legality of refraining from exercising due diligence will often be contingent on contentious legal questions regarding countermeasures and self-defence.
Other Publications
