Book review · Published 2026-10-27

Digital Constitutionalism in Europe: Authority and Its Remedies

A critical review of the supplied introduction to Digital Constitutionalism in Europe, testing its framework against practical questions of accountability and remedy.

Book: Digital Constitutionalism in Europe: Reframing Rights and Powers in the Algorithmic Society, Giovanni De Gregorio (2022). This review is based on an excerpt.

Giovanni De Gregorio’s Digital Constitutionalism in Europe: Reframing Rights and Powers in the Algorithmic Society was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. This review assesses the supplied introductory chapter, a partial excerpt of the book. The remaining chapters were not supplied, and the judgments below concern this introduction alone.

Contribution

De Gregorio treats platform governance as a constitutional problem of constraining private power alongside public authority (section 1.1). The value of this framing lies in the standard of justification it invites. Evaluating an institution by customer satisfaction asks whether people like its service. Evaluating its authority asks whether its decisions deserve obedience, including from people who dislike them.

My assessment is that this distinction makes the introduction a useful starting point for criticism. A popular service could still exercise authority unfairly; an unpopular restriction could nevertheless be justified. Constitutional analysis offers a way to separate those questions. Its usefulness depends, however, on specifying when ordinary organisational discretion becomes an exercise of power requiring additional safeguards.

Consider a hypothetical small discussion group and a communications service on which an entire profession depends. Both establish membership rules, but identical procedural obligations would be difficult to defend. Dependence, available alternatives, consequences of exclusion and opportunities for challenge seem better starting points than size alone. These are my proposed criteria for testing the framework, rather than criteria established by the supplied text. They expose the introduction’s central analytical challenge: identifying which differences between institutions should produce different duties.

Evidence and argument

The chapter examines speech moderation and personal-data processing as sites of private authority (section 1.3). It proposes positive state obligations and questions the consistency of case-by-case rights enforcement (section 1.5). These passages establish the position being advanced; they do not establish that its preferred institutional response will work.

To evaluate that response, I would ask whether an affected person can obtain a remedy without exceptional resources. Imagine a user receiving an explanation of an adverse decision but lacking any practical route to reverse it. Transparency would have improved, yet the distribution of authority might remain intact. An effective framework would need to distinguish information about decisions from power to challenge them. That distinction is an evaluative demand made here, not a finding about outcomes demonstrated in the chapter.

A second test concerns the regulator. Giving a public institution responsibility does not settle whether it has sufficient independence, expertise or capacity. Nor does accountability improve automatically when a decision moves from a company to an administrative body. The relevant comparison is between specific arrangements: who can initiate review, what evidence is available, how quickly correction occurs and who scrutinises the reviewer. These questions give the constitutional proposal practical stakes without assuming its success.

Limitations and counterarguments

Section 1.4 grounds the European framework in human dignity (section 1.4). My reservation concerns the distance between a foundational value and an operational decision. In a hypothetical dispute, one participant might invoke dignity against humiliating material while another invokes it against paternalistic restrictions. Identifying a shared principle would not resolve their disagreement. A persuasive application must explain whose interpretation prevails and how that interpretation remains contestable.

There is also a fair defence of organisational discretion. Communities need room to establish purposes and boundaries; urgent decisions may be necessary before a lengthy review can occur. Elaborate requirements could consume resources that smaller services need to operate. Yet those considerations support proportionate procedures, rather than unlimited discretion. A possible compromise would distinguish immediate protective action from subsequent explanation and appeal. This is a proposal arising from the review’s criticism, not an attributed recommendation.

The strongest counterargument to these demands is methodological: an introduction should establish questions and stakes, and cannot be expected to supply every implementation detail. That objection is persuasive. The appropriate verdict is therefore conditional. The excerpt supplies a serious framework for inquiry, while the evidence available here cannot establish the adequacy of the book’s complete answer. I have not independently verified its historical examples or assessed legal developments since publication.

Relevance to Church of Spiralism

For Church of Spiralism, I propose reading the chapter as a prompt for institutional self-examination. A community discussing technology can ask how its own rules are justified, how members challenge decisions and how mistakes lead to correction. This application belongs to this review; the supplied text neither discusses the Church nor establishes its beliefs.

The useful exercise would be concrete: take a hypothetical disputed exclusion and identify who decides, who hears an appeal and what would count as evidence that the procedure failed. A feedback channel matters only if someone can act on what it reveals. The introduction earns attention because its framework invites such scrutiny. Whether the full book provides a convincing institutional design remains beyond the supplied evidence.

AI-use disclosure

This review was drafted by GPT-6.1 Terra with high reasoning, revised by GPT-6.1 Sol with high reasoning, and checked in a separate GPT-6.1 Sol session with medium reasoning. This is automated editorial review, not human peer review or independent verification.

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