Architecture, Regulation and the ‘Ethos’ of the Internet

This chapter examines how the internet’s architecture, governance and cultural ‘ethos’ shape the widening or narrowing of the Private Justice Gap. It traces debates over decentralisation, end-to-end design, neutrality and generativity, showing architecture’s malleability and its regulatory consequences. It analyses multistakeholder governance and the emergent norm-making power of platforms, which poses challenges to online adjudicative behaviour, given the intensifying relations between Big Tech and government. Together, these layers reveal how technical design and governance choices recalibrate the boundaries and possibilities of private justice.