Welcome

Under the keywords “personalized law” and “granular law”, there is currently a controversial debate about the possibilities and limits of data-based law, which captures social reality in a much more granular way than was previously possible. Supporters hope that this will lead to a higher degree of justice in individual cases, while critics see risks to privacy and an erosion of the principle of equality.

Little attention has so far been paid to the question of what legal and factual conditions would have to be created in order to enable a “granular turn” in legislation and the application of the law.

Experts from the fields of law, business informatics and cognitive science will discuss this on 22/23 May 2025 at the interdisciplinary conference “The granular data society as a legal fact”. The conference is organized by Prof. Dr. Christoph Busch and Dr. Maren Wöbbeking and takes place as part of the project  Granular Society – Granular Law?, which is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation through a Momentum Grant.

 Conference program

The founding conference of the Scientific Association for Consumer Law will take place on February 16-17, 2025 in the Harnack House of the Max Planck Society in Berlin. The conference is jointly organized by Prof. Dr. Markus Artz (University of Bielefeld), Prof. Dr. Beate Gsell (LMU Munich) and Prof. Dr. Christoph Busch (University of Osnabrück).

 Further information on the program. 

Professor Busch will be a speaker at the Consumer Law Scholars Conference, which will take place on March 6-7, 2025 at Boston University School of Law. As part of the conference, Professor Busch will present a paper on “Consumer Law for Custobots: Updating Consumer Law for Agentic AI Systems”. Professor Busch is currently working on legal issues in connection with AI agents as part of a  project of the European Law Institute.

The members of the German Advisory Council on Consumer Affairs (SVRV) have elected Prof. Busch as their new chairman. The SVRV advises the Federal Government on consumer policy issues.

 More information on the work of the SVRV

Professor Busch participated in the Consumer Law Scholars Conference at the University of California, Berkeley, on February 29 and March 1, 2024. As part of the conference, Professor Busch discussed a paper on current developments in the regulation of subscription contracts. Professor Busch and his team are currently working on issues relating to the subscription economy as part of a  research project funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMUV).

From February 17, 2024, the new regulations of the Digital Services Act (DSA) will apply to providers of online platforms and other digital marketing services in the European Union. To mark this occasion, the DSA Observatory of the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam is organizing an international conference on the 15-16 February 2024, at which academics from Europe and the USA will discuss current issues of platform regulation. Professor Busch will give a lecture on “Content Moderation at the Infrastructure Layer: A Blindspot in the DSA?” as part of the conference.

 Program of the conference in Amsterdam