Thread by @daphnehk

This AG Opinion in a pending CJEU case about the tensions between GDPR and journalists' rights to access court records is pretty amazing.
curia.europa.eu/juris/document…

It's full of things like "[in] an administrative law dispute between Z (‘Citizen Z’) and the Mayor of Utrecht (‘Mayor M’)... X (‘Lawyer X’) acted as Citizen Z’s representative."
Reading it, I wondered if the AG was deliberately making things sound as Kafkaesque as possible.

And it turns out the AG -- a respected legal expert working for one of the most important EU institutions -- really WAS trying to sound like Kafka. Check out this footnote!

I think I'm in love. 🥰🥰🥰

The AG's observations about the logic of data protection expanding indefinitely to swallow up other human and societal concerns are fierce. I kept having to use new highlighting colors to capture how 🔥🔥🔥 this Opinion is.

And as he points out, if data protection constraints really do cover basically every normal human discussion about other humans, the law becomes something everyone ignores. It's the same problem Jessica Litman wrote about with copyright twenty-five years ago.

The footnotes are where all the best digressions and snarky asides go to die. Or to live on! Here's AG Bobek speculating on how to justify gossiping in a pub about a rumor he received via email.

And then there's footnote 50.

His bottom line message is a compelling one for judges: Rejecting my argument would mean giving up your own judicial independence and authority. (Handing it to DPAs, in this case.)