Senta Leyke

Senta holds a law degree from the University of Göttingen and an LL.M. degree (Master of Laws) from the University of California, Berkeley. She took her bar exam in Berlin. For the last three years, Senta has been working as a lawyer in a Berlin law firm specializing in intellectual property and data protection law. She is a PhD candidate at Humboldt University in Berlin supervised by Prof. Axel Metzger.

In her Ph.D. project, she examines the conflict-of-laws rules on cross-border data processing. European data protection law not only becomes relevant in regulatory contexts; it also plays a significant role in private law relationships. In the event that a contract is concluded between the data processor and the data subject, data protection law affects the contractual rights and obligations between both parties. In addition, European data protection law stipulates provisions concerning damages in case of violations of data subjects’ privacy rights. Since the European substantive law potentially differs significantly from a third country’s data protection law, for example, as compared to privacy law in the United States, it is essential for both parties to gain clarity on the question which law a civil court will or is likely to apply to their dispute.

Accordingly, at the center point of the project stands Article 3 of the European General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), which defines the territorial scope of the regulation and can be perceived as a conflict-of-laws provision. The motivation behind the research project is not only to interpret this specific provision, but also to embed it in the broader context of the European Union’s system of international private law.