A theory of global internet governance underlies Andrew Woods’s analysis of how judicial comity doctrines should apply to cross-border data disputes. First is the principle of sovereignty. Nations are sovereign in the sense that they wield legitimate and usually effective authority within a territory, including authority over data and data infrastructure in the territory, and over the people and firms in the territory that use the data and infrastructure. Second, national boundaries roughly reflect differences in the histories, commitments, cultures, norms, and individual and aggregate preferences that governments roughly want to preserve.
