Dimitri Van Den Meerssche
Biographic Data
| ID | 2216757 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dimitri Van Den Meerssche |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dimitri Van Den |
| FAMILY NAME | Meerssche |
| SIGNATURE | VAN DEN MEERSSCHE D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen Mary University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8753-8967 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Legal Infrastructures of UK Border Control—Cerberus and the Dispositif of Speculative Suspicion
The promise of artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly invoked to ‘revolutionize’ practices of global security governance, including in the domain of border control. Legal scholarship tends to confront these changes by foregrounding the rule of law challenges associated with nascent forms of governance by data, and by imposing new regulatory standards. Yet, little is known about how these algorithmic systems are already reconfiguring legal n…
On phantom publics, clusters, and collectives
This article starts from the observation that practices of ‘algorithmic governmentality’ or ‘governance by data’ are reconfiguring modes of social relationality and collectivity. By building, first, on an empirical exploration of digital bordering practices, we qualify these emergent algorithmic categories as ‘clusters’—pulsing patterns distilled from disaggregated data. As fluid, modular, and ever-emergent forms of association, these ‘clusters’ …
International Law and Technology as a Critical Project
This introductory essay traces key themes that run through the five contributions collected in this book review symposium. Distilling common threads and intersecting interventions, the essay aims to draw the contours of an emerging and distinct critical project in the interdisciplinary sphere of international law and technology. It insists on grounding these reflections in the here and now – in relation to the deployment of advanced algorithmic t…
Global south perspectives on methodology and critique in international law
I am writing this introduction as Israel's violence against the Palestinian peopledespite ICJ provisional measures, a landmark advisory opinion, and applications for arrest warrants by the ICC's Office of the Prosecutoris continuing unabated.In the eclectic community of critical international lawyers, this has been a source of activism and mobilization as much as friction and hesitationepistolary indictments of genocidal violence published alongs…
Deformalizing International Organizations Law
Taking on this Symposium’s invitation to rethink international organizations law by focusing on scholars and practitioners outside the mainstream, this article explores and evaluates the legacy of Anne-Marie Leroy, the World Bank General Counsel from 2009 to 2016. In her attempt to trade the formal, rigid language of law for the deformalized routine of risk management – described as a ‘paradigm shift’ from ‘rules to principles’ – Leroy could be p…
The multiple materialisms of international law
The field of (critical) international law seems to be having a materialist moment.Classic themes on international law's structural indeterminacy, 1 cultural hierarchies, 2 or the political possibilities of its historical contingencies 3 are increasingly questioned by accounts that trace the discursive operations, dynamics of difference or patterns of (dis)continuity in international law to their material foundations.The framework of historical ma…
The Critical Subject and the Subject of Critique in International Law and Technology
The making of legal subjects has long been a crucial terrain for critical theory, also in relation to international law, where both emancipatory promises and expressions of power or discipline are tied to how subjects are recognized and enacted. International law's modes of subject-making have therefore been an important site of aspiration, struggle, and critique. While some have celebrated the rise of the individual on the stage of international…
Is This the Rhizome? Thinking Together with Fleur Johns
On the heavily polluted soil of De Ceuvel-a former shipyard in Amsterdam turned into an eco-tech playground-the Sovereign Nature Initiative (SNI) recently convened its first Experimental Zone: a 'celebration of ecology, art, theory and emerging technologies' (Sovereign Nature Initiative 2022a). Bringing together crypto-poets, ecophilosophers, blockchain developers and tech start-up investors, the gathering sought to spark 'radical approaches towa…
Virtual Borders
The use of algorithmic tools by international public authorities is changing how norms are made and enacted. This seismic shift in global governance has important distributive consequences: the digital turn not only empowers specific corporate actors and forms of expertise but also entails new modes of social sorting based on the placement of people in patterns of data. This article focuses on the emergent inequalities that machine learning and d…
A Legal Black Hole in the Cosmos of Virtue—The Politics of Human Rights Critique Against the World Bank
The World Bank is often portrayed by human rights scholars as a ‘legal black hole’ where the workings of international law have been suspended. In a recognizable routine of human rights activism, consistent attempts are therefore made to throw out the normative net of international law over this institutional domain. A familiar response by the institution is the assertion of its autonomous international legal status and constitutional limitations…
Regulatory Integration Across Borders
International Law as Insulation – The Case of the World Bank in the Decolonization Era
This article maps out how (international) legal concepts and norms were employed during the inter-institutional struggle between the United Nations and the World Bank in the decolonization era. The first contribution is historiographical. Drawing on material from the Bank’s (oral) archives, the article gives an original account of the ways in which the organization bypassed the universalist aspirations that were gaining a foothold in the UN’s dem…
Performing the rule of law in international organizations
In recent years, the academic field of international institutional law has taken a clear ‘constitutional’ turn. In this normative endeavour, liberal ‘rule of law’ ideals are being reinvigorated, translated and projected onto international organizations. This article trades this well-trodden path for a socio-legal inquiry into how the ‘rule of law’ is produced, practiced and performed in the everyday political and operational life of one specific …
Calling Themis
Virtual Borders
The use of algorithmic tools by international public authorities is changing how norms are made and enacted. This seismic shift in global governance has important distributive consequences: the digital turn not only empowers specific corporate actors and forms of expertise but also entails new modes of social sorting based on the placement of people in patterns of data. This article focuses on the emergent inequalities that machine learning and d…
The multiple materialisms of international law
The field of (critical) international law seems to be having a materialist moment.Classic themes on international law's structural indeterminacy, 1 cultural hierarchies, 2 or the political possibilities of its historical contingencies 3 are increasingly questioned by accounts that trace the discursive operations, dynamics of difference or patterns of (dis)continuity in international law to their material foundations.The framework of historical ma…
The Critical Subject and the Subject of Critique in International Law and Technology
The making of legal subjects has long been a crucial terrain for critical theory, also in relation to international law, where both emancipatory promises and expressions of power or discipline are tied to how subjects are recognized and enacted. International law's modes of subject-making have therefore been an important site of aspiration, struggle, and critique. While some have celebrated the rise of the individual on the stage of international…
Performing the rule of law in international organizations
In recent years, the academic field of international institutional law has taken a clear ‘constitutional’ turn. In this normative endeavour, liberal ‘rule of law’ ideals are being reinvigorated, translated and projected onto international organizations. This article trades this well-trodden path for a socio-legal inquiry into how the ‘rule of law’ is produced, practiced and performed in the everyday political and operational life of one specific …
Calling Themis
Performing the rule of law in international organizations
In recent years, the academic field of international institutional law has taken a clear ‘constitutional’ turn. In this normative endeavour, liberal ‘rule of law’ ideals are being reinvigorated, translated and projected onto international organizations. This article trades this well-trodden path for a socio-legal inquiry into how the ‘rule of law’ is produced, practiced and performed in the everyday political and operational life of one specific …
International Law as Insulation – The Case of the World Bank in the Decolonization Era
This article maps out how (international) legal concepts and norms were employed during the inter-institutional struggle between the United Nations and the World Bank in the decolonization era. The first contribution is historiographical. Drawing on material from the Bank’s (oral) archives, the article gives an original account of the ways in which the organization bypassed the universalist aspirations that were gaining a foothold in the UN’s dem…
Regulatory Integration Across Borders
A Legal Black Hole in the Cosmos of Virtue—The Politics of Human Rights Critique Against the World Bank
The World Bank is often portrayed by human rights scholars as a ‘legal black hole’ where the workings of international law have been suspended. In a recognizable routine of human rights activism, consistent attempts are therefore made to throw out the normative net of international law over this institutional domain. A familiar response by the institution is the assertion of its autonomous international legal status and constitutional limitations…
Is This the Rhizome? Thinking Together with Fleur Johns
On the heavily polluted soil of De Ceuvel-a former shipyard in Amsterdam turned into an eco-tech playground-the Sovereign Nature Initiative (SNI) recently convened its first Experimental Zone: a 'celebration of ecology, art, theory and emerging technologies' (Sovereign Nature Initiative 2022a). Bringing together crypto-poets, ecophilosophers, blockchain developers and tech start-up investors, the gathering sought to spark 'radical approaches towa…
Virtual Borders
The use of algorithmic tools by international public authorities is changing how norms are made and enacted. This seismic shift in global governance has important distributive consequences: the digital turn not only empowers specific corporate actors and forms of expertise but also entails new modes of social sorting based on the placement of people in patterns of data. This article focuses on the emergent inequalities that machine learning and d…
Deformalizing International Organizations Law
Taking on this Symposium’s invitation to rethink international organizations law by focusing on scholars and practitioners outside the mainstream, this article explores and evaluates the legacy of Anne-Marie Leroy, the World Bank General Counsel from 2009 to 2016. In her attempt to trade the formal, rigid language of law for the deformalized routine of risk management – described as a ‘paradigm shift’ from ‘rules to principles’ – Leroy could be p…
The multiple materialisms of international law
The field of (critical) international law seems to be having a materialist moment.Classic themes on international law's structural indeterminacy, 1 cultural hierarchies, 2 or the political possibilities of its historical contingencies 3 are increasingly questioned by accounts that trace the discursive operations, dynamics of difference or patterns of (dis)continuity in international law to their material foundations.The framework of historical ma…
The Critical Subject and the Subject of Critique in International Law and Technology
The making of legal subjects has long been a crucial terrain for critical theory, also in relation to international law, where both emancipatory promises and expressions of power or discipline are tied to how subjects are recognized and enacted. International law's modes of subject-making have therefore been an important site of aspiration, struggle, and critique. While some have celebrated the rise of the individual on the stage of international…
The Legal Infrastructures of UK Border Control—Cerberus and the Dispositif of Speculative Suspicion
The promise of artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly invoked to ‘revolutionize’ practices of global security governance, including in the domain of border control. Legal scholarship tends to confront these changes by foregrounding the rule of law challenges associated with nascent forms of governance by data, and by imposing new regulatory standards. Yet, little is known about how these algorithmic systems are already reconfiguring legal n…
On phantom publics, clusters, and collectives
This article starts from the observation that practices of ‘algorithmic governmentality’ or ‘governance by data’ are reconfiguring modes of social relationality and collectivity. By building, first, on an empirical exploration of digital bordering practices, we qualify these emergent algorithmic categories as ‘clusters’—pulsing patterns distilled from disaggregated data. As fluid, modular, and ever-emergent forms of association, these ‘clusters’ …
International Law and Technology as a Critical Project
This introductory essay traces key themes that run through the five contributions collected in this book review symposium. Distilling common threads and intersecting interventions, the essay aims to draw the contours of an emerging and distinct critical project in the interdisciplinary sphere of international law and technology. It insists on grounding these reflections in the here and now – in relation to the deployment of advanced algorithmic t…
Global south perspectives on methodology and critique in international law
I am writing this introduction as Israel's violence against the Palestinian peopledespite ICJ provisional measures, a landmark advisory opinion, and applications for arrest warrants by the ICC's Office of the Prosecutoris continuing unabated.In the eclectic community of critical international lawyers, this has been a source of activism and mobilization as much as friction and hesitationepistolary indictments of genocidal violence published alongs…
Political science (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Law (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Law and economics (7 works) · International law (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · International Law and Human Rights (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Corporate governance (4 works)