The forest and the trees

Hello, dear reader, and welcome to another issue of AI, Law, and Otter Things! I hope you are doing well these days. My plans were to write this issue shortly after the previous one. However, a few of my works in progress are finally coming to fruition and, since they are the ones paying my bills, they naturally take priority. But now that things have calmed a bit, I'd like to come back to the newsletter.

Here in Luxembourg, the weather is looking unexpectedly nice for early November, giving us the opportunity to bask in some extra sunlight before the clouds take over. Still in the terrain of seemingly positive developments, the Danish presidency of the EU Council seems to have removed the mandatory scanning provision from its attempt to pass the Chat Control 2.0 regulation, though some commenters warn that the draft compromise still leaves room for sneaking that requirement back in. Amid the FOMO-driven proposals for the "digital omnibus", this at least has the potential not to be awful. Still, this is unlikely to be the last time digital law scholars and activists have to spend an awful lot of energy showing once more that this is a terrible policy idea.

In today's issue, I am a bit more tongue-in-cheek as usual, as I share some brain farts thoughts on the methodological turn(s) in legal scholarship, with special attention to my corner of tech-related stuff. After that, as usual, we will have a few reading recommendations, opportunities, and an adorable otter. Hope you enjoy!

What can legal research methodology do for us?

Habitual readers of this newsletter might be aware that I am very interested in matters of research methodology. So, it was with great pleasure that I accepted the invitation to speak at the workshop "Methods in Legal Discipline: Post-Doctoral Insights Across Research Fields", which is being put together by some early career colleagues at my department. In my talk on 8 December, I will cover briefly a question that increasingly reflects my personal approach to research: how do you deal with technology when tech is not your central object of interest? In addition, we will also have other researchers from the University of Luxembourg discussing questions on research methods in law.

Generally speaking, my impression is that reflections about how to do research in legal academia are becoming more and more common. In part, this popularization stems from the growing acceptance of non-doctrinal research as legal scholarship, even in more traditional academic milieux. Another chunk of it comes from the attempt of new specialisms, such as the Law & Technology tradition in which I have been trained, to claim a seat at the adults' table. But even within doctrinal scholarship one can point out to a growing level of reflection about the aims, objectives, and processes of research, in addition to the classic concerns with the identification of sources and their interpretation. I, for one, welcome those developments. Still, my non-legal past makes me wonder if we do not expect too much from methodology sometimes.

For example, a focus on methodology is often presented as an antidote to sloppy scholarship. This belief can take various forms, such as the obsession with the idea of a "legal science" present in Civil Law jurisdictions, the embrace of quantification as a way to produce more "objective" claims about the law, or the idea that "merely" doctrinal research is akin to astrology. To a certain extent, this belief is indeed true, as more rigour with our methods can help us pay more attention to what we can (or not) claim on the grounds of the facts and the applicable normative framework.

The problem comes when the belief degenerates into a fragmented view of knowledge, which sees it as the product of individuals (or small groups thereof) applying some method to produce insights about the world. While a focus on the process of inquiry can indeed lead to improvements in the individual outputs generated by them, one should not lose track of systemic factors that can reduce the contribution of such outputs to the big enterprise of knowledge. For example:

• Different communities within the same field (let's say, technology law) might be working from incommensurable perspectives, so that one cannot simply accumulate the outputs of methodologies that might be perfectly reasonable under their own terms. See, e.g., the clashes between critical approaches to the law and the mainstream.
• Not all research puzzles are made equal. Some low-hanging fruits might yield considerable insight while demanding relatively little effort, while others might demand much attention and advance in little our understanding of certain fields of the law. These evaluations are necessarily value-laden, and are unlikely to be feasible ex ante, which means that methods can do little to help us at this stage.
• Even when there are established best practices in terms of methodology, other mechanisms might mean that sub-par results are still produced. As the replication crisis in science illustrates, attention to methodology can be useful for detecting various problems with studies, but it is not in itself enough to prevent the publication of improper or even fraudulent claims.

Another issue, which is not entirely unrelated, is that methodology is difficult. Even more so in law, where we are often prompted to import the practices of other disciplines without having training in the concepts and techniques that sustain those practices. The result, more often than not, is scholarship that uses jargon from other disciplines to bludgeon the reader into submission, rather than as a tool for broadening horizons.

This is not to say that legal scholarship should be "pure" and never draw from the outputs of other disciplines; it would be very hypocritical of me to say that, at the very least. But, when we do, one must always be careful not to reify those disciplines. It is all too grating to see people claiming that "economics says X", or "sociology says Y" as a reason for why we should interpret the law in a certain way, rather than understanding that X and Y are claims that are made within a context and with lots of caveats.

That is even more so when we are talking about using the methods of others: there is no sense in replicating practices that lead to good knowledge in a field that we wish to emulate if we do not understand why these practices work — and, more importantly, when they do not. Such understanding is not beyond the reach of lawyers, and, for any given discipline, there are many examples of legal scholars doing good interdisciplinary work. But doing so requires effort, and in its absence, a methodology that is potentially useful can end up being little more than an attempt to "borrow" the legitimacy of practices in a way that other legal scholars might accept because they lack the means to criticize it.

None of that, of course, means that legal scholars should spend less time thinking about methodology. Quite the contrary: we need to think more about that, and to have proper methodological training in our formation as researchers (So, by all means, join our workshop in December!). From an individual perspective, such training will likely have considerable payoff and help you and I in becoming the best researchers we can be. But we should not miss the forest for the trees, losing track of the broader contexts in which methodologies are expected to operate.

(And, if you happen to work on these structural questions as they emerge in legal research, I would love to hear from you!)

Recommendations

Just the other day, European Data Protection Law published my review of Irene Kamara's book "Standardizing Personal Data Protection" (OUP 2025). You can check the open-access review here, and then read the book afterwards.

As for other people's writing, here are some things I've enjoyed recently:

• Deirdre Curtin and Tommaso Fia, ‘Cracking AI Secrecy: EU Migration Law & Governance and Beyond’ European Law Open forthcoming.
• Dave Lewis and others, ‘Mapping the Regulatory Learning Space for the EU AI Act’ (arXiv, 28 May 2025).
• Joana Mendes, ‘The EU and the Administration’s Unattainable Subordination to the Law’ [2025] Current Legal Problems cuaf007.
• Francesca Minetto, ‘Does the EU Ever Import Its Policies? The Overlooked Role of International Institutions’ Journal of European Public Policy early access.
• Caio Mario da Silva Pereira Neto and Arthur Sadami, ‘The Third Wave of Globalization in Competition Policy: Uncertainty, Fragmentation and Institutional Experimentation’ (21 October 2025).
• Paul Ohm, ‘The Future-Proof Fantasy of AI Regulation’ (Network Law Review, 1 October 2025).
• Philippe van Basshuysen, ‘Performativity in Science: Past and Future’ (2025) 20 Philosophy Compass e70062.

Opportunities

Disclaimer: as usual, I am gathering these links purely for convenience and because I think they might be of interest to readers of this newsletter. Unless I explicitly say otherwise, I am not involved with any of the selection processes indicated below.

Are you a legal (or legal-adjacent) professional interested in the impact of AI in law and society? Then, the Brussels Study Center has just the thing for you: an Executive Master in Law & AI, with lectures that cover the legal and technical foundations of this domain. Their next cohort starts on 21 November 2025, and I will give a lecture to them on the AI Act on 9 January 2026.

David Hadwick, a friend and interlocutor on matters of tax and AI, will defend his PhD "Deus Tax Machina: The use of artificial intelligence by EU tax administrations and its impact on taxpayers’ fundamental rights" on 24 November 2025. Join the defence if you want to learn about digitalization, tax administrations, and/or fundamental rights in AI.

The Center for AI and Digital Policy has now opened applications for the Spring 2026 CAIDP AI Policy Clinics. These Clinics are intensive, interdisciplinary, semester-long courses established to train future AI policy leaders, and I have the pleasure of collaborating with CAIDP as part of their Global Academic Network. Submit your application by 2 December 2025!

For the final Phish and Chips lecture of 2025, we will have the pleasure of hosting Pier Giorgio Chiara for a talk on the EU's Cyber Resilience Act. The talk will take place on 28 November 2025, both in person at the Weicker building (Kirchberg) and online. Registration is mandatory but free.

The Information Society Law Center at the University of Milan invites applications for non-resident fellows for the 2026-2027 biennium. During that period, activities will be focused on five thematic areas: Videogames and Law; Geopolitics, Global Affairs and Human Rights; AI and Health; New Technologies and Vulnerable Groups; and The Augmented Jurist. Applications are due by 30 November 2025.

The REALaw Forum 2026 will take place on 3-4 September 2026, in Aix-en-Provence (France). For next year's edition, they invite contributions from early career scholars on ‘Escaping accountability - EU law and comparative administrative law perspectives’. For more information, see their LinkedIn post, and send your abstract by 30 November 2025.

My doctoral alma mater, the European University Institute, is now looking for PhD researchers for its four doctoral programmes (Law, Economics, Social and Political Sciences, and History). Applications are open until 15 January 2026. Funding for doctoral programmes in the EUI is connected to your country of origin, but each department has at least one scholarship for candidates from outside the EU. In particular, if you are a student from the Global South interested in technology law and/or innovation more generally, look into the ASPIRE programme, which kindly funded my final year of doctoral research.

And now, the otter

Thanks for your attention! Do not hesitate to hit “reply” to this email or contact me elsewhere to discuss some topic I raise in the newsletter. Likewise, let me know if there is a job opening, event, or publication that might be of interest to me or to the readers of this newsletter. Hope to see you next time!