Computer Engineering Commons^™

The Myth Of Private Ordering: Rediscovering Legal Realism In Cyberspace, Margaret Jane Radin, R. Polk Wagner

All Faculty Scholarship

While Cyberspace is, by now, well-recognized as a social and commercial environment of great promise, there is considerable debate about the form of governance that will best meet the needs of this new medium. Much of the present discussion casts this debate in stark terms?"top-down" hierarchical rules versus spontaneous "bottom-up" coordination?with self-ordering based on contracts and private agreements rather than public laws appearing both preferable and more likely to evolve. Following up on arguments presented by Professors Fisher and Elkin-Koren in this symposium, Radin and Wagner point out that the dichotomy between top-down and bottom-up obscures that a self-ordering regime …