Technological Neutrality of Norms: Prospects for Implementing a Legal Concept

Technological neutrality of legal norms is a category that lacks a single, substantive meaning applicable across most spheres of human activity. In scientific research, lawmaking and law enforcement, this category is invoked to address different problems. The purpose of the article is to assess the prospects for constructing legislation based on the idea of technological neutrality of norms and to evaluate the feasibility of using this category in lawmaking. The article analyses the main domains in which technological neutrality is discussed in scholarship and official documents, namely information technology, telecommunications and cryptography and considers the technological neutrality of potential regulatory solutions concerning crypto-assets. The research relies on formal-logical, formal-dogmatic, comparative and systemic methods. It argues that the idea of technological neutrality of norms can become an interdisciplinary scientific concept if researchers reach at least a working consensus on the meaning of this category. The article concludes that using the category of “technological neutrality” is possible and appropriate in specialized legislative acts and strategic planning documents, provided that the context clearly delineates the boundaries of such neutrality. At the same time, the system of norms should be structured around necessary restrictions on the use of technologies to protect human interests, taking into account the nature of particular technologies and the cultural characteristics of society.