Hello, dear reader, and welcome to another issue of AI, Law, and Otter Things! It has not been that long since the latest issue, but as ancient internet wisdom says, everything happens so much. In my usual turf of AI, cyber policy and EU law, we have, inter alia, the penultimate draft of the GPAI code of practice, a new report by Europol on serious and organized crime and its growing digitalization,1 and the Commission sent Google2 some preliminary findings that might spell trouble for it under the Digital Markets Act. Meanwhile, Brazil’s proposed reforms to income tax (and others) don’t seem half bad, despite some justified scepticism before their release. So, once again, I am really glad that I am not writing a “current affairs” newsletter or I would have little time for anything else.
On a slightly less world-historical level, we at UniLu’s Chair in Cyber Policy have just released a short video in which we introduce the goals of the chair and our research lines. Check it out!3 Much of that research is still in development, but I am happy to share that our first joint paper from the outlined agenda has been accepted to a Workshop in June. I will share more information once we have a draft to share, but the paper deals with how different narratives about the relationship between fundamental rights and securitization coexist within EU digital law.
As for myself, I have some good and bad personal news. The bad news are that I am increasingly reading things in print, as the Medieval monks did, rather than on screen. I hate that, as I am much more efficient with my trusty digital notes and my handwriting is slow and scratchy. Still, printing things has helped me mitigate the fact that I am a terrible proofreader,4 and it also helps me when skim reading. As better news, I finally found a painting scheme for my Chaos Space Marines that I can reproduce quite regularly and does not look terrible. So, expect to see more pictures of my sloppy attempts at Warhammering in the near future.
In the meantime, today’s newsletter follows the usual formula. First, we have a short essay, which this time focuses on my views on the value and challenge of feeling stupid while doing research. Then, I share a few things I think you might like to read, followed by some open calls for papers and other opportunities. Finally, an adorable otter. Hope you like it!
The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts
A few days ago, I had a chat with a colleague who recently started their PhD in law at Luxembourg. Lacking much knowledge about the doctoral programme around here, I nonetheless found the conversation fruitful, as we could talk much about the dizzying experience that is starting doctoral research, as well as about our shared research interests. As usual, I pointed them towards Raul Pacheco-Vega’s excellent resources on how to do research and survive in academia, and hopefully did not end up being too patronizing. Yet, one thing that stuck with me since the chat is that interesting research, in any discipline, tends to require getting things wrong a lot.
As is often the case in my meta-reflections, this is not a particularly novel insight. Martin A Schwartz has a nice text about how feeling stupid is not only an integral feature of the doctoral experience, but essential for actually making any progress. While I think that the idea of a “legal science” is a disservice for both legal scholarship and science, this insight seems to apply (mutatis mutandis) to what we do in legal academia. But I don’t have the impression that we, as a community,5 prepare early-career scholars for this any better than the picture of science training Schwartz painted in 2008.
Being productively stupid is a skill that needs to be actively teached, as it runs against instincts that are deeply ingrained by education into legal scholars. First, let’s face it: if you are entertaining the idea of a PhD, you are likely to be a huge nerd of some form or another. You probably did well at university studies, or were clever enough that any less than stellar grades were rightfully seen as a waste of potential. Armchair sociology also points out that legal education can amplify that craving for getting things right, not least because it trains people for professions where you have to persuade somebody (such as a judge) of the strength of your arguments. Coming from that background, it can take a while to get used to the very idea that nobody can tell you authoritatively if you are right or wrong.
This is not to say that people won’t tell you anyway. Scholars tend to be heavily opinionated about their topics of interest, even the ones they do not master, and rightfully so.6 But, after you are deep enough into the relevant scholarship, it becomes less and less likely their opinion reflects a settled state of affairs rather than an (ideally) reasoned position within the space of positions that are accessible from the current state of the art. If one is doing doctrinal research, there is at least the hope that some external source might carry out an “authentic interpretation” that aligns the law as applied in practice with the positions one espouses. For more fundamental or critical research, validation might be harder to come by. As a result, research in law can be pretty frustrating, especially if one does not derive much pleasure from the puzzle-solving aspects of most scholarship.
The question of whether and how one can cope with this has no clear-cut answers. For some people, the realization that stupidity is an inevitable part of the process can lead to a change in career plans, and there is nothing wrong with that. Others, which I envy, have an acute sense of self-importance that is not punctured by this kind of reflection. Satisfaction can also be derived from a variety of other sources, such as doing practical work that one deems relevant and fits with one’s research, teaching, and so on. Every PhD researcher must figure out what works for them, and often this process does not end with the defence, as I can see from the post-doctoral experiences of myself and others.
What about my own motivation? Given how much I am driven by external validation, the self-importance part is not really an option for me. So, I feel acute embarrassment when I find myself to be wrong, and even though my career is still short, I already feel I defended some positions I no longer stand behind. Yet, the joy I derive from my academic work—not to mention the possibility of making a living out of it—is enough to keep me going as a rule.7
As for the unease of getting things wrong, I can’t say it is really gone after my PhD. Maybe it will pass sometime, but in the meantime I find myself inspired by Robert Nozick’s words:
At any rate, I believe that there is also a place and function in ongoing intellectual life for a less complete work, containing unfinished presentations, conjectures, open questions and problems, leagues, site connections, as well as a main line of argument. There is room for words on subjects other than last words.8
Academic publication is (or at least should be) an ongoing dialogue among peers rather than the search for geniuses who will guide us toward the light. For all my utter incompetence in phys ed classes, I find it useful to think of my line of work as a team sport rather than an individual competition.9 Viewing things like this, there is no shame in being wrong if your errors are actually helping the team, that is, if you are wrong in interesting ways that move the conversation forward.10 And even if one is not, the cost of getting things wrong in academia is often much lower than the potential payoff from a novel insight,11 so it is worthwhile to try things and see what is fruitful. In the end, to quote another philosopher, the solution I find is just keep swimming.
Recommendations
If you happen to read Portuguese, or are inclined to rely on automated translation, you should definitely read Renata Vaz Shimbo’s newsletter. As a proud husband, I am biased, but she writes much better and much more broadly than I do. Check that newsletter for reflections about life, the universe, and everything, with particular emphasis on her experience as an expat in her early 40s, a former scholar of Samuel Beckett’s oeuvre, and (now) an early-career researcher of EU law and care work.
You might also be interested in the following publications I came across recently:
Chander A, ‘The National Security Internet’ (Social Science Research Network, 23 February 2025)
Haag M, ‘The Court of Justice’s Shift in Interpreting Directive 2004/38 and Union Citizenship: An Illusion of Legislative Intention and Legal Certainty’ [2025] Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law.
Hofmann HCH, Coman-Kund F and Xhaferri Z, ‘Assessing the Post-Lisbon European Union’s System of Delegated Powers at Fifteen’ (2024) 15 European Journal of Risk Regulation 781
Isailović I, ‘Gender in Political Economy and EU Law’ (2024) 15 Transnational Legal Theory 525
Mitsilegas V, ‘Reconceptualising Security in the Law of the European Union’ (2025) 2024 9 European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration 1438.
Telles P, ‘General Principles of European Union Public Procurement Law’ (Draft, forthcoming @ Elgar Encyclopedia of European Law).
Vogiatzoglou P, ‘The EU’s Quest for Digital Sovereignty: A Matter of Quantum Innovation?’ (2025) 4 Digital Society.
Opportunities
The European Law Unbound Society will hold its first conference at Charles University in Prague, from 25 to 27 September 2025. The conference is titled “European Law Unbound: What Kind of Europe Can We Reach For?” and it aims to stimulate debate on the role law in addressing Europe's massive challenges. They welcome contributions from scholars in any career stage, with any academic interests or perspective of European law. Proposals for panels and individual papers, among other formats, are due by 15 April.
The Hype Studies collective will host a conference in Barcelona, at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), from 10th to 12th of September, 2025. The conference invites a variety of presentation formats and disciplines, with proposed contributions being due by 10 May.
PLSC-Europe 2025 has just released its call for papers. Abstracts with 400-700 words are due by 15 May, with full papers to follow by 1 October. Those papers will be discussed at the conference, hosted by Leiden Law School on 23 and 24 October 2025.
The Cambridge Forum on AI: Law and Governance invites submissions for the upcoming Themed Issue: Towards trustworthy and responsible AI in adjudication, guest edited by Shu Li, Helga Molbæk-Steensig and Alberto Quintavalla. Deadline 1 June.
Digital Society is hosting a topical collection on Quantum Society, edited by Pieter Vermaas. Contributions are invited until 31 August.
My colleagues at the IRiSC group, SnT – University of Luxembourg are currently hiring a PhD student and a postdoc on topics related to cybersecurity preparedness and metrics, within an interdisciplinary research team.
Finally, the otter
Thanks for your attention! Hope you found something interesting above, and please consider subscribing if you haven’t done so already:
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!
TL;DR: “the world is scarier than ever, hybrid threats, so y’all should let us add encryption backdoors that won’t solve the problems but will give us some illusion of control.”
Technically, Alphabet, but this is an informal space.
This might or not be a response to the claim that I am, in fact, three otters wearing a trenchcoat. You’ll be the judge.
As any readre of this newsletter can see.
I benefitted from an amazing support network of scholars, as well as the shreds of maturity I gained in taking the long road to legal academia.
This does not mean they should have a carte blanche to be assholes. In fact, some of the sharpest critiques I have received were among the kindest ones. Personally, I do have a tendency to be a bickering asshole, so I try to tone down my criticism a bit, but nowadays I am trying to stop over-compensating for that.
Of course, that might be punctured by external developments and/or my own mental health status.
Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974), p. xii.
Though, of course, structural factors certainly push us towards competition. Also, I’m a pretty competitive person, so it takes me some effort to compensate for that, too.
Barring important ethical considerations, which I lack the room to discuss here.
My half-joking position is that it is the job of academics to get things wrong, and learn why they are wrong, so that professionals that work in more applied contexts (in the case of law, people such as judges, policymakers, and bureaucrats) can avoid errors when it matters. There are very important reasons why this is not the only concern that should guide academics, not least Keynes’s known adage about the ideas of dead economists. Still, one might wonder what is the opportunity cost of publication gatekeeping favouring ideas that are right in uninteresting ways to the detriment of allowing people to be wrong in ways that break the stalemate in some debates.