The Argumentative Structure of a Half-Century of European Data Protection Public Policy

Profound technological and political changes have occurred since the adoption of the first data protection laws in the 1970’s. Despite this, their general principles and definitions have remained largely unchanged in currently applicable texts, such as the General Data Protection Regulation, approved in 2016. This article adopts a cognitive approach to public policy to show that this strong continuity can be attributed in a large part to the stability of the argumentative structure of debates held within the institutional spaces where these legal norms are produced.