Thomas Aquinas, Ronald Dworkin, and the Fourth Revolution: The Foundations of Law in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Abstract

Since the publication of Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, the strategies of Surveillance Capitalists and appropriate responses to them have become common points of discussion across several fields. However, there is relatively little literature addressing challenges that Surveillance Capitalism raises for the foundations of law. This article outlines Surveillance Capitalism and then compares the views of Thomas Aquinas and Ronald Dworkin in four areas: truth and reality, reality and law, interpretation and social custom, and virtue and law; finally, it closes by asking whether the law alone can provide a sufficient response to Surveillance Capitalism. The overarching argument of the article is that, while Aquinas’s view of the foundations of law accounts for and responds to the challenges of Surveillance Capitalism more effectively than Dworkin’s, law alone cannot provide a sufficient response to this emerging phenomenon.

Can Artificial Intelligence Engage in the Practice of Law as the Art of Good and Justice?

“…Aquinas proposes that virtue is foundational to law. The goal of law is to train individuals in virtue, and because virtues are at least interdependent with one another, morally vicious legislators cannot make truly good laws (Smith 2023).…”