E-Commerce Regulation: Necessity, Futility, Disconnect
Existing e-commerce regulations constitute a premature and unnecessary interference in the natural evolution of commercial practices and technologies. I question not just their quality, mainly attributable to the technological ignorance of the regulator, but their very necessity. I observe the practical futility of drafting effective regulatory instruments in areas subject to continuous and unpredictable technological change. I criticize the overly homogenous approach to “everything Internet” (i.e. everything involving the Internet requires new law) as well as the creation of new regulatory spheres and legal categories. Some might claim that it is too early for a critical retrospective of this subject. Despite its relative “youth,” however, the “law of e-commerce” has developed a set of orthodox approaches. It is therefore not too early to present some heterodox views, especially given the largely unsuccessful regulatory activity in the European Union. Not just technologies but also theories about the Internet can become obsolete within a short period of time and should therefore be subject to constant revision.
How to Make Bad Law: Lessons from Cyberspace
There is a clear trend for law and regulation, particularly in cyberspace, to become increasingly precisely specified. The perceived benefit of this approach, increased certainty as to compliance, may be illusory. Over-complex laws have serious disadvantages, particularly a greatly weakened normative effect, and problems of contradiction and too-frequent amendment. The combined effect of these disadvantages can be to produce a ‘bad’ law system, assessed in terms of Fuller's internal morality of law. It may also result in a law-system which substantially fails to achieve its intended aims. This article proposes that these defects can be cured by abandoning the search for precision and substituting a method of lawmaking which requires the law's subjects to make their own qualitative assessments of whether they are meeting the obligations imposed on them. This will make the law more easily understandable by those to whom it applies, and will also increase the normative effect of cyberspace law.
The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice ten years on: Successes and future challenges under the Stockholm Programme. CEPS Paperbacks. June 2010
This book celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) by bringing together the views of key practitioners and policy-makers who have played an outstanding role in thinking about and shaping EU policies on freedom, security and justice. 
 
Ten years ago, the member states transferred competences to the EU for law and policy-making in the fields of immigration, asylum and border controls, and began the transfer process for criminal justice and policing. This decade of European cooperation on AFSJ policies has experienced very dynamic convergence, the enactment of a large body of European law and the setting-up of numerous EU agencies working in these domains. Such dynamism in policy-making has not been without challenges and vulnerabilities, however. As this collective volume shows, the main dilemmas that lie ahead relate to an effective (while more plural) institutional framework under the Treaty of Lisbon, stronger judicial scrutiny through a greater role for national courts and the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, better mechanisms for evaluating and monitoring the implementation of EU AFSJ law and a more solid fundamental rights strategy. The contributions in this volume address the progress achieved so far in these policy areas, identify the challenges for future European cooperation in the AFSJ and put forward possible paths for making more progress in the next generation of the EU’s AFSJ.