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Conflicts Of Law And Transnational Data Flows, Paul S. Berman Jan 2020

Conflicts Of Law And Transnational Data Flows, Paul S. Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Phillip Jessup correctly observed sixty years ago that multinational corporate activity created new challenges for nation-states and their territorially based rules for jurisdiction, choice of law, and judgment recognition. Those challenges are exponentially more difficult in the 21st century because electronic data—everything from e-mails and text messages to Facebook and Instagram posts to Twitter pronouncements to drone warfare data to search algorithms to financial transactions to cloud data storage—travel around the globe with little relationship to physical territory. In addition, all of this data is often in the custody and control of data intermediaries.

Three important consequences flow from this …