It has become a truism that data are now bigger than ever before: that is, information assembled and “used for reference, analysis, and calculation,” especially information in digital form, has increased in volume, variety, and velocity to unprecedented levels, “typically to the extent that [their] manipulation and management present significant . . . challenges” (OED Online, s.v. “data (n.),” and “big (adj. and adv.)”). In the field of international law, there is growing scholarly interest in the phenomenon of “big data”—used here in the singular, as a mass noun—and what it might mean in and for international law, international institutions, and international legal work. For the most part, however, that scholarship is being pursued under auspices other than that announced by this article. No subfield of international legal scholarship answerable to the title “Big Data and International Law” has yet emerged. Moreover, given the diversity of data types, analytical techniques, and technological settings evoked by the term big data, it is far from clear that any subfield so named could acquire or retain coherence. Accordingly, this bibliography assembles a somewhat piecemeal collection of works that are likely to be helpful to those embarking upon research in big data and international law, broadly understood. It includes work by scholars who identify as international lawyers and understand themselves to be researching in that field. It also includes writings that cannot be so described, but that are works by which international legal scholars interested in big data might usefully be informed. Also included are works that take a comparative and/or transnational approach to the analysis of legal issues for big data and big data issues for law. Some of the scholarship referenced might be regarded as offshoots of scholarship on (international) law and technology, but that is not the case in all instances. Some scholars have acquired a curiosity about operations of big data on international law by proceeding from other starting points: by following developments in particular substantive areas of international legal work, for instance, or by pursuing epistemological and/or theoretical inquiries in relation to which the advent of big data throws up thorny challenges. The headings proceed, more or less, from the general to the particular and from the introductory to the specialized. Earlier references are more meta-analytical in scope and tend to foreground discipline-wide dilemmas, epochal changes, and epistemological shifts. Later, the bibliography highlights some key subfields in which inquiries surrounding big data and international law are burgeoning, including in the conduct of international legal research. In all respects, this bibliography should be treated as indicative rather than exhaustive.
Sensing Possibility in International Law – Concepts and Categories for the 21st Century: A Response to Fleur Johns