FairDigiT

The Legal Design Clinic on Fair Digital Transition is a tailored-made course that will allow students to explore challenges at the intersection of law and technology in an innovative and practical way.

The course is project-based: students from law and computing science will collaborate in groups to design solutions for a legal challenge in the field of information law, requiring interdisciplinary cooperation. For example, they will be asked to propose innovative ideas to make digital rights more accessible and inclusive, present legal information in a usable and actionable way, support companies in complying with legal obligations in the digital sphere, or raise public awareness about socio-legal issues (e.g. surveillance) and corresponding rights (e.g. privacy and data protection).

Students in Law are not required to have any prior It knowledge, as students in computing science are not required to be familiar with Law. All students will receive a solid foundation in the legal and technical issues relevant to their challenge. Lectures and tutorials will be tailored to accommodate the diverse backgrounds of the students.

Students will be guided through the whole lifecycle of the project and coached with specific sessions to acquire the skills needed for each step.

This course intends to simulate real-world professional scenarios that our graduates might encounter in the future. In an increasingly digitalised world, law firms, companies, NGOs and public institutions face complex challenges that demands interdisciplinary approaches and collaboration. The job market is increasingly requiring “T-shaped” professionals, i.e. individuals who are experts in their own field but also able to “speak the language” of other disciplines, understand the mindset of professionals with another background, and operate in synergy with them. The course aims to equip students with the tools to strengthen their knowledge and expertise in their own field while fostering an agile mindset and the ability to work effectively in interdisciplinary context.

Module on “Law and Technology”

The module intends to provide a solid basis for exploring the relationship between law and technology from a comparative and historical perspective. On the one hand, it will focus on "technology as law", i.e. as a regulatory tool to constrain or enable human behaviour. On the other hand, it will present the legal challenges of regulating emerging technologies, for instance, how the law reacts to technological innovation and what methods exist for legal foresight.

AI is an evolving field of computer science whose applications have been deployed in many sectors of our daily lives. From complex medical applications that can identify certain pathologies through data mining to a basic online search, AI applications hold a great potential to support or enhance human activities. However, the possibilities they are opening up also raise a number of challenges from an ethical and legal perspective.

The course aims to introduce students to the legal challenges raised by Artificial Intelligence (AI), the legal framework applicable to it, the specific regulations enacted to face such challenges (e.g. the EU AI Act), and the policy initiatives now under discussion to regulate such a field in other countries, including the UK.

The course will be organised around six main topics, such as:

1. Introduction to regulatory models for AI.
2. Algorithmic discrimination: Raising awareness and reassessing the adequacy of the present legal framework
3. AI-generated content and intellectual property: balancing different rights and interests in the creative domain
4. The green and the digital transition: exploring the interplay between the twin transitions
5. Liability aspects of AI. How the law allocates risks and generates incentives among “many hands”
6. Transnational governance of AI: What are the main approaches, and can they address the pitfalls of national governance?

No previous technical knowledge is required. The legal analysis might sometimes require a basic understanding of certain technical aspects of a technology. In such cases, a computer science expert (Dr Arabella Sinclair) will provide an easy-to-follow explanation in a way that it is accessible to all students, regardless of their non-specialist background.

The digital economy is now largely characterised by the role played by intermediary gatekeepers, such as online platforms. The European Commission has defined the latter as “an undertaking operating in two or (multi)-sided markets, which uses Internet to enable interaction between two or more distinct but interdependent groups of users so as to generate value for at least one of the groups”. These business models (Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, Amazon are some examples of them) do not operate as merely passive carriers, but they are creating new markets and reshape Internet governance mechanisms. While their existence can potentially entail new job opportunities and consumer choices, their increasing market power and gatekeeping function is raising several concerns from a legal point of view. Through private ordering, platforms can influence consumer behaviours, include or exclude competitors, curate and select the content that one can access online.

The course aims to critically discuss the emerging legal challenges raised by online platforms in the digital economy, their current regulation at the domestic and European level, and the ongoing initiatives to create a level playing field for the actors operating in the digital economy.

The course will be organised around six main topics, such as:

• The origin of the platform economy: historical and economic background
• The global governance of the digital economy: the Brussels, Washington, and Beijing effects
• Platform power and competition law
• Fair work in the platform economy
• Information and freedom of expression on digital platforms
• Transparency of online marketplaces and consumer protection: the issue of dark patterns and online manipulation

No previous technical knowledge is required. The course will see the participation of experts from different backgrounds (e.g. computer science, psychology) to provide an easy-to-follow introduction to specific technical aspects which are relevant for the legal analysis.

We live in the information society. We produce millions of terabytes of data every day through our economic activity, online behaviours, interaction on social media, use of smart objects, queries on GenAI tools, etc. Moreover, thanks to cloud computing, Big Data, and machine learning, we now have the computational resources to extract value from this information and re-use it for various purposes.

Still, much of this information is about “us” and, in some cases, it relates to a very intimate and sensitive sphere.

• How is all this information processed and governed?
• Who can use it and for what legitimate purposes?
• And what rights do we enjoy as “data subjects”?

The right to data protection offers a first primer for understanding and answering such questions. In the course, we will explore how the law regulates personal information and its free movement.

The knowledge of such areas of the law is crucial not only for becoming aware our digital rights and the fundamental mechanics of the online environment. The processing of personal data is also an essential activity in any business organisation and public institution, creating the need for new figures and legal professions (e.g., the data protection officer).

The course aims to introduce students to the core aspects of data protection law, exploring its international, European, and national dimension. Against this backdrop, it will tackle the most pressing issues emerging in the policy and doctrinal debate by critically discussing the role of data protection regulation in the digital environment.  

The course will be divided in two parts. The first one will be dedicated to data protection law fundamentals, and it will revolve around core topics, such as:

• The right to privacy and the right to data protection: an international overview.
• The EU and UK data protection framework (part I): fundamental principles, key concepts, and rationale.
• The EU and UK data protection framework (part I): procedures and remedies.

In the second part of the course, students will be asked to apply their knowledge and critically engage with key global data privacy challenges, such as:

• Personal or not personal? The blurred boundaries of anonymisation in the Big Data society
• The right to explanation to automated decisions.
• GenAI and data protection challenges.

No previous technical knowledge is required. The legal analysis might sometimes require a basic understanding of certain technical aspects of a technology. In such cases, a computer science expert (Dr Arabella Sinclair) will provide an easy-to-follow explanation in a way that it is accessible to all students, regardless of their non-specialist background.

The course aims to introduce students to the foundations of data protection law, exploring its international, European, and national dimension.

The course addresses, in particular, the role of data protection regulation in the digital environment, critically discussing key global challenges, such as the impact of artificial intelligence on data subject’s rights, the challenges of data protection compliance, the balance between the right to data protection and other fundamental freedoms.

This course will introduce and investigate a number of legal and ethical issues around the ethics of technology, particularly the ethics of artificial intelligence. We will address questions such as the moral status of artificial agents; the difference, if any, between human rights and artificial rights, and problems of data bias and discrimination in automated decision-making. We will also consider regulatory frameworks established to ensure the safety and trustworthiness of AI systems (such as the AI Act). The course aims to flag and deepen the understanding of the ethical and legal issues that our graduates might face in their future profession (as lawyers, AI developers, consultants, educators).