11 THE ITALIAN LAW JOURNAL NO. 1 (2025)
The Law of the European Horse:
by Silvia De Conca Whether law and technology is its own branch of the law is a thirty-year old question. This debate, dubbed the ‘law of the horse’, begun in the 1990s and spread to Europe from the United States, surviving to this day. When it reached continental Europe, the debate was shaped at a methodological, semantic, and epistemological level by the American scholarship. This transplant gave life to new, context-specific challenges in the European Union (EU), where law and technology scholars are faced with a choice: adopt a horizontal approach, exploring questions of governance and regulation, or zoom-in vertically on the national framework. Doing both might solve this tension, but it is a herculean task. This article explores the existing tension within the EU law and technology scholarship, suggesting five ways in which universities and funding institutions can help overcoming this tension, moving from the author’s first-hand experience as an Italian legal scholar working abroad. DOI 10.23815/2421-2156.ITALJ ISSN 2421-2156
The Law and Technology Scholarship in the European Union, Between National Legal Traditions and Supranational Governance
