Reason of State Strikes Back

My article “Le tournant numérique : la raison d’État à l’épreuve des flux de données” (“The Digital Turn: Reason of State Put to the Test by Data Flows”) has just appeared in the latest issue of the Revue de science criminelle et de droit pénal comparé.

This somewhat theoretical piece, along with the other contributions to the dossier “Raisonner la raison d’État” (“Reasoning Reason of State”), follows from Juliette Tricot’s invitation to take part in the workshop of the Printemps du droit in May 2025 at the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, in tribute to Mireille Delmas-Marty.

Here is my article’s abstract:

Acknowledging the resurgence of raison d’État in the governance of the Internet, this article examines the strategies deployed within the field of digital activism to resist it, as well as the causes of their relative failure. It revisits the heterodox legal hermeneutics mobilised by these actors and shows that their claim to a “para-legality” grounded in human rights has come up against a profound reconfiguration of the exercise of power. Read through the Foucauldian trilogy of economies of power, the intensification of cross-border data flows has contributed to an “illiberalisation” of techniques of government, as the state forged new alliances with the major providers of digital infrastructures and accelerated the extra-judicialisation of censorship and surveillance functions. More broadly, digital regulation – from the GDPR to the AI Act – has proved to be less a safeguard against these trends than a vector for consolidating an algorithmic governmentality, which the article situates within the genealogy of the “warrior anthropology” identified by Mireille Delmas-Marty. Digital technologies thus contribute to politico-legal transformations that are fundamentally at odds with the humanist premises of the rule of law.

Reference: Tréguer, F. (2026). Le tournant numérique: La raison d’État à l’épreuve des flux de données. Revue de Science Criminelle et de Droit Pénal Comparé, 3(3), 558–566.