Droit et gouvernance polycentrique des technologies normatives: enjeux démocratiques et constitutionnels

The project addresses the relationships between Law and the myriad of norms generated by non-state actors involved in the governance of the Information Society. A first question is about both the specificities, if any, of the legal norms, or of the Law, in the regulatory landscape of the Information Society, and the role that the law might have in the assessment and guarantee of the legitimacy of 'non-state norms'. Assuming that a basic condition of the legitimacy of norms, whatever their kinds, would reside in the possibility that individuals have to contest them, we would confront this contestability requirement to the unprecedented capacity some technological devices or systems have to influence the 'user's behaviours and/or personality, be it to constrain him to comply with legal requirements or restrictions, to induce him into behaviours and attitudes meeting dominant social expectations, or to impact on their behaviours and choices in a way that is beneficial to some public or private agents. With regard to those normative technologies, and to way they challenge the emblematic figure of the individual sovereign subject inherited from the Enlightenment, so crucial in the operation of several branches of law (the most obvious being criminal law) and for democratic processes allowing debates about norms, one will try to identify, among what positive law and subjective rights have to offer, the manner through which the law could protect the reflexive capabilities of individuals.