Inniss Data Nullius is a critical diagnostic legal framework that identifies a structural condition in contemporary data governance: that data about or generated by structurally marginalized, postcolonial, or otherwise vulnerable communities occupies a de facto legal vacuum analogous to the historical doctrine of terra nullius. Just as colonial law treated unclaimed territories as empty and available for appropriation regardless of existing inhabitants and their systems of use, so too does the prevailing architecture of data law treat the data of marginalized communities as ungoverned and available for extraction by powerful data actors, including technology corporations, state institutions, and research bodies. Inniss Data Nullius does not propose a new property regime; it is a critical diagnostic instrument designed to expose structural gaps in the law and to equip scholars and policymakers with a conceptual vocabulary adequate to those gaps. A body of Jamaican legal commentary — here termed the Jamaican rejoinder — has engaged critically with Inniss Data Nullius on five distinct grounds: (i) alleged constitutional incompatibility with Jamaica's individual-rights architecture as established under the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms (Constitutional Amendment) Act 2011 and as interpreted in Julian Robinson v Attorney General 2019 JMFC Full 04; (ii) the asserted adequacy of the Data Protection Act 2020 (Jamaica) in addressing the data governance gaps that Inniss Data Nullius identifies; (iii) the postcolonial inapplicability of the terra nullius analogy to the specific context of Jamaica's colonial and creole heritage; (iv) concerns that Inniss Data Nullius threatens Jamaican and CARICOM digital sovereignty; and (v) the risk that the Principle of Data Reversion, a corollary of Inniss Data Nullius, impermissibly transfers individual rights to collective or state bodies. This paper responds to each strand of the Jamaican rejoinder in turn. It argues, first, that Inniss Data Nullius is fully compatible with Jamaican constitutional law, including the informational privacy right confirmed in Julian Robinson, and that constitutional individual-rights frameworks and structural data justice diagnostics operate on distinct analytical registers that are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Second, it contends that the Data Protection Act 2020 does not close the structural gap that Inniss Data Nullius identifies, addressing as it does individual data subject rights rather than the systemic conditions of data extraction from which marginalized communities disproportionately suffer. Third, it demonstrates that the terra nullius analogy resonates powerfully — and with distinctive force — within Jamaica's own history of colonial extraction and the legal nullification of the enslaved person's personhood and juridical standing. Fourth, it shows that Inniss Data Nullius, far from threatening Caribbean sovereignty, offers a critical instrument that Caribbean scholars and policymakers can develop and deploy on their own terms and in service of regional self-determination. The paper makes a broader contribution to the emerging literature on data justice, postcolonial legal theory, and Caribbean legal thought. It advances the application of Inniss Data Nullius to postcolonial Small Island Developing States and Caribbean legal orders; it enriches the data justice literature with Caribbean-situated legal analysis that moves beyond the Global North frameworks that dominate the field; and it opens a productive scholarly conversation about how regional legal frameworks, including CARICOM digital governance architecture, can engage with Inniss Data Nullius to build an equitable, sovereignty-respecting data order for the Caribbean region.
Abiola Inniss (Sat,) studied this question.