Where will the XVIII International Natural Law Conference be held?

The conference will be held in the city of Santiago, CHL.

What is the format of the XVIII International Natural Law Conference?

The conference is an in-person event, providing a direct forum for discussion and collaboration.

XVIII International Natural Law Conference

Name: XVIII International Natural Law Conference
Start: 2026-10-26T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-10-28T00:00:00Z
Location: Santiago

Oct 26–28, 2026Santiago, ChileIn-person

Registration open

The XVIII International Natural Law Conference is scheduled to convene in Santiago, Chile. This event serves as a significant forum for scholars and practitioners to delve into the foundational principles and contemporary applications of natural law. Participants will engage in discussions that explore the enduring relevance of natural law in shaping legal systems and ethical frameworks across diverse societies.

Committees & topics

Topics
Freedom of Expression and the Transformation of the Public Sphere · Digital Platforms and the Governance of Public Discourse · Public and Private Governance of Freedom of Expression on Platforms · Content Moderation, Legitimacy, and Due Process · Social Media, Democracy, and Public Deliberation · Deepfakes, Synthetic Media, and the Crisis of Authenticity · Truth, Evidence, and Trust in Digitally Mediated Environments · Identity, Dignity, Image, Voice, and Personality Rights in the Digital Age

Why it matters

Natural law, as a concept, posits that there are universal moral principles inherent in nature, discoverable by reason, which form the basis of all human laws. Understanding these principles is crucial for developing robust legal frameworks that transcend cultural and political boundaries. The conference in Santiago, CHL, provides a platform to critically examine how these principles can address modern challenges, from human rights to environmental ethics.

The discussions at this conference are particularly pertinent in an era marked by rapid technological advancements and evolving societal norms. By re-evaluating natural law, participants can contribute to a more stable and just international order. The insights generated from such gatherings can inform policy-making and legal reforms, fostering greater coherence and fairness in global governance. This intellectual exchange is vital for ensuring that legal systems remain grounded in fundamental ethical considerations.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the themes of the XVIII International Natural Law Conference, delegates should undertake a comprehensive review of both classical and contemporary natural law theories. This preparation should include an analysis of how different philosophical traditions interpret and apply natural law principles. Understanding the historical evolution of natural law thought will provide a robust foundation for contributing to the discussions.

Furthermore, participants should consider how natural law intersects with current global issues, such as international human rights law, environmental regulations, and bioethics. Preparing case studies or conceptual frameworks that link natural law to these contemporary challenges will enhance the quality of engagement. Familiarity with various national legal systems and their relationship to natural law, particularly in countries like CHL, will also be beneficial for a nuanced understanding of the discussions. A strong grasp of the concept of "dynamic-analysis" will be helpful for understanding the evolving nature of legal interpretations.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Chile

Host nation with a rich legal tradition, providing a regional context for natural law discussions.

Role in topic

As the host country, CHL offers a unique perspective on the application and interpretation of natural law within a Latin American legal framework. Its legal scholars and practitioners will contribute insights on how natural law principles interact with civil law traditions and contemporary constitutionalism.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Freedom of Expression and the Transformation of the Public Sphere

Freedom of expression, enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the ICCPR, was historically conceived against a backdrop of state censorship, print media, and broadcast regulation. Jürgen Habermas's notion of a deliberative public sphere — bourgeois coffeehouses, newspapers, and parliamentary debate — shaped liberal constitutional doctrine across the twentieth century, from the U.S. First Amendment tradition to the European Convention on Human Rights Article 10 jurisprudence developed by the Strasbourg Court. The digital transition has restructured this sphere. Communicative power has shifted from editors and broadcasters to algorithmically curated networks operated by a small number of transnational firms, while the velocity, scale, and anonymity of online speech have generated new harms — incitement, harassment, disinformation — that classical doctrines did not anticipate. UN Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Opinion and Expression (notably the 2018 and 2021 reports by David Kaye and Irene Khan) have argued that Article 19's three-part test (legality, legitimate aim, necessity and proportionality) still governs, but its application to private intermediaries remains contested. Today the debate centers on whether the public sphere can be reconstituted under conditions of platform mediation: through co-regulation (as in the EU Digital Services Act), constitutionalization of platform power, revitalized public-service media, or natural-law arguments about speech as ordered to truth and the common good. Delegates must weigh universal human-rights standards against divergent national traditions and the structural reality of privately governed communicative infrastructure.

Key players

Digital Platforms and the Governance of Public Discourse

Since the mid-2000s, a handful of platforms — Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Google's YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and messaging services such as WhatsApp and Telegram — have become the principal venues of public communication for billions of users. Their governance was initially shielded by intermediary-liability regimes such as Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act (1996) and the EU e-Commerce Directive (2000), which treated platforms as conduits rather than publishers. Over time, however, controversies over electoral interference (2016 onward), the Christchurch livestream (2019), COVID-19 misinformation, and the January 6 deplatforming of a sitting U.S. president made clear that platform rules function as a de facto transnational speech code. Regulators have responded with markedly different models. The EU's Digital Services Act (2022) imposes systemic-risk assessments, transparency duties, and crisis-response protocols on Very Large Online Platforms. The UK Online Safety Act (2023) creates Ofcom-supervised duties of care. India's IT Rules (2021, amended 2023) assert broad state takedown powers. Brazil debates PL 2630. China and Russia operate prescriptive licensing and content-control regimes. The U.S. remains constitutionally constrained, as seen in Moody v. NetChoice (2024). The core dispute is whether platform governance should be modeled on broadcasting (public-interest regulation), on common carriage (neutrality), on fundamental-rights adjudication (proportionality), or on natural-law conceptions of the common good in communication. Each model implies different allocations of authority among states, firms, courts, and users.

Key players

Public and Private Governance of Freedom of Expression on Platforms

Freedom of expression online is governed by overlapping public and private orders. States legislate through criminal codes, broadcasting and telecommunications law, data-protection regimes, and platform-specific statutes. Platforms simultaneously enforce community standards, advertiser policies, and terms of service — instruments that reach further and act faster than any court. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2011) and the Rabat Plan of Action (2012) provide normative anchors, while the Santa Clara Principles (2018, revised 2021) articulate civil-society expectations for transparency and remedy. The tension between these orders became acute during the COVID-19 pandemic and successive electoral cycles, when governments pressured platforms to remove content while platforms unilaterally adopted policies (e.g., on health misinformation, hate speech, election integrity) that effectively legislated for global audiences. Meta's Oversight Board, created in 2020, represents an experiment in quasi-judicial private adjudication, while the EU DSA's 'trusted flaggers' and out-of-court dispute-settlement bodies attempt to embed public-law values inside private moderation. Delegates must address how natural-law and human-rights traditions allocate responsibility when speech harms occur in privately owned but functionally public spaces — whether through horizontal application of fundamental rights (Drittwirkung), platform constitutionalism, statutory due-process mandates, or recognition of platforms as bearers of public-interest duties.

Key players

Content Moderation, Legitimacy, and Due Process

Content moderation operates at enormous scale: platforms make billions of enforcement decisions annually, the vast majority by automated classifiers. Errors are inevitable in both directions — over-removal silences lawful speech (including journalism, human-rights documentation, and minority viewpoints), while under-removal allows incitement, child sexual abuse material, and targeted harassment to spread. The legitimacy deficit is sharpened by the asymmetry of power between users and platforms and by the opacity of automated systems. The Santa Clara Principles call for numbers, notice, and appeal. The EU DSA codifies notice-and-action procedures, statements of reasons, internal complaint-handling, and external out-of-court dispute settlement. Meta's Oversight Board issues binding decisions on individual cases and non-binding policy recommendations. UNESCO's 2023 Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms emphasize due process and independent oversight. Courts in Germany (Bundesgerichtshof, 2021), Brazil, and India have demanded reasoned moderation decisions and meaningful appeals. The central question is what process is 'due' when private actors exercise quasi-adjudicative power over speech. Options range from procedural transparency and individual remedies to structural reforms — independent appeals bodies, regulator-supervised audits, algorithmic impact assessments, and natural-law arguments grounded in the dignity of the speaker and the right to a hearing before deprivation of a fundamental good.

Key players

Deepfakes, Synthetic Media, and the Crisis of Authenticity

Generative-AI tools released since 2022 — diffusion models for images and video, voice-cloning systems, and large language models — have made synthetic media cheap, convincing, and ubiquitous. Documented harms include non-consensual intimate imagery (which constitutes the majority of detected deepfakes), fraud and impersonation, election-period audio fakes (e.g., the 2024 New Hampshire Biden robocall), and the broader 'liar's dividend' by which authentic recordings can be plausibly dismissed as fabricated. Regulatory responses are emerging unevenly. The EU AI Act (2024) imposes transparency obligations on providers of deepfakes and on deployers of synthetic content. China's 2023 Provisions on the Administration of Deep Synthesis require labeling and real-name registration. South Korea has criminalized possession of sexual deepfakes. The U.S. has acted at state level and via the NO FAKES Act and TAKE IT DOWN proposals; the FCC has clarified TCPA application to AI voice. Industry initiatives such as the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) propose cryptographic content credentials. The deeper challenge is epistemic. When any image, voice, or video can be fabricated, the social practices through which communities establish truth — testimony, evidence, journalism — are destabilized. Natural-law reflection on truthfulness as a precondition for communal life, alongside human-rights doctrine on dignity and personality, offers resources for debating provenance regimes, criminal prohibitions, civil remedies, and platform duties.

Key players

Truth, Evidence, and Trust in Digitally Mediated Environments

Public knowledge has long depended on chains of trust — credentialed journalism, scientific peer review, official statistics, judicial fact-finding. Digital mediation has disrupted each of these. Search and recommendation systems compress and reorder information; engagement metrics reward salience over accuracy; large language models generate fluent but sometimes fabricated content; and declining trust in legacy institutions (tracked across the Edelman Trust Barometer and Reuters Institute Digital News Reports) coincides with rising exposure to mis- and disinformation. Responses include investment in fact-checking networks (IFCN), media-literacy curricula, journalism subsidies, structured data initiatives by courts and statistical offices, and emerging frameworks for AI provenance (C2PA) and watermarking. UNESCO's 'Internet for Trust' initiative and the Windhoek+30 Declaration frame trust as a global public good. At the same time, courts and tribunals confront evidentiary challenges: authenticating digital materials, addressing AI-generated submissions, and preserving open-source evidence of atrocities, as in the work of the IIIM-Syria and the ICC. The natural-law tradition treats truth-telling as constitutive of community; contemporary human-rights doctrine treats access to reliable information as instrumental to autonomy and democratic participation. Delegates must consider how to rebuild durable infrastructures of trust — pluralistic, rights-respecting, and resilient against both manipulation and over-reaching state 'truth' regimes.

Key players

Identity, Dignity, Image, Voice, and Personality Rights in the Digital Age

Personality rights — protecting name, image, voice, honor, and identity — have deep roots in civil-law traditions (German allgemeines Persönlichkeitsrecht, French droits de la personnalité, Brazilian Civil Code arts. 11–21) and in common-law doctrines of privacy, defamation, and the right of publicity. International instruments protect dignity (UDHR Art. 1), privacy and reputation (ICCPR Art. 17), and, for children, image and identity (CRC Arts. 8, 16). Catholic social teaching and the broader natural-law tradition ground these rights in the inherent dignity of the human person. Digital technologies stress every dimension of these rights. Non-consensual intimate imagery, doxxing, voice-cloning scams, AI-generated likenesses of celebrities and ordinary citizens, posthumous digital reanimation, and the training of generative models on personal data without consent have produced a wave of litigation and legislation. Examples include the EU GDPR's identity-related protections, Tennessee's ELVIS Act (2024) on voice and likeness, the proposed U.S. NO FAKES Act, India's Delhi High Court rulings recognizing personality rights of public figures, and Brazilian and German cases extending image rights to AI-generated content. The core dispute is how to reconcile robust personality protection with freedom of expression, satire, journalism, and creative use, and how to allocate responsibility among generators, deployers, distributors, and platforms. Delegates should consider whether existing dignitarian frameworks suffice or whether new sui generis rights — in voice, likeness, and digital identity — are required, and how such rights interact with universal human-rights standards.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for XVIII International Natural Law Conference.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Trump's Legal Battles Impact 2026 Elections

Trump's Economic Reset

Supreme Court's Voting Rights Impact on 2026

GOP Conservative Factions Clash Over Trump

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Media & Press Relations

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

By committee

Frequently asked questions

XVIII International Natural Law Conference

Oct 26–28, 2026Santiago, ChileIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Freedom of Expression and the Transformation of the Public Sphere · Digital Platforms and the Governance of Public Discourse · Public and Private Governance of Freedom of Expression on Platforms · Content Moderation, Legitimacy, and Due Process · Social Media, Democracy, and Public Deliberation · Deepfakes, Synthetic Media, and the Crisis of Authenticity · Truth, Evidence, and Trust in Digitally Mediated Environments · Identity, Dignity, Image, Voice, and Personality Rights in the Digital Age

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Chile

Host nation with a rich legal tradition, providing a regional context for natural law discussions.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Freedom of Expression and the Transformation of the Public Sphere

Key players

Digital Platforms and the Governance of Public Discourse

Key players

Public and Private Governance of Freedom of Expression on Platforms

Key players

Content Moderation, Legitimacy, and Due Process

Key players

Deepfakes, Synthetic Media, and the Crisis of Authenticity

Key players

Truth, Evidence, and Trust in Digitally Mediated Environments

Key players

Identity, Dignity, Image, Voice, and Personality Rights in the Digital Age

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for XVIII International Natural Law Conference.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Trump's Legal Battles Impact 2026 Elections

Trump's Economic Reset

Supreme Court's Voting Rights Impact on 2026

GOP Conservative Factions Clash Over Trump

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Media & Press Relations

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

Seminario “Política Exterior 2026: Chile en un mundo en transición”

CyberSecurity Bank & Government 14° Edición

Dual Hub Summit - FIDAE 2026

Seminario "Política exterior chilena 2026-2030: los desafíos ante el nuevo escenario global"

International Conference on Leadership, Human Rights, and International Law

RCSL 2026 – The Democratic Rule of Law in World Society

Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

Seminario “Política Exterior 2026: Chile en un mundo en transición”

CyberSecurity Bank & Government 14° Edición

Dual Hub Summit - FIDAE 2026

Seminario "Política exterior chilena 2026-2030: los desafíos ante el nuevo escenario global"

International Conference on Leadership, Human Rights, and International Law

RCSL 2026 – The Democratic Rule of Law in World Society

Frequently asked questions