2019, How Technological Change Restructures Fundamental Legal Relations


The Seminar meets Tuesdays from 12:10 to 2:00. Lunch is served from noon. The Spring 2019 Seminar will devote itself to the ways in which new technologies—including machine learning, big data processing, and panopticon monitoring—are transforming some of the basic categories and relationships of private law.  We will address the employment relation, the consumer contract, the organization of the firm, privacy, alternative dispute resolution and the balance between private and public regulatory power. The Seminar will bring together prominent speakers from practice with leading legal scholars studying the relationships of law, society, economics and philosophy.

The readings are available by request by emailing private.law@yale.edu.

12 February Omri Ben Shahar, University of Chicago Law School
Personalizing Negligence Law
19 February Julie Cohen, Georgetown University Law Center
Between Truth and Power
26 February Brishen Rogers, Temple Law School
How are New Technologies Really Changing Work
5 March Yochai Benkler, Harvard Law School
Integrating Technology into Political Economy
19 March Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law School
How Code Changes We
3 April Sheila Jasanoff, Harvard Kennedy School
Technological Innovation and the Politics of Future-Making
9 April Lisa Austin, University of Toronto Faculty of Law
Privacy, Manipulation, and Social Identity
16 April Colin Rule, Tyler Technologies
Expanding Access to Justice through Online Dispute Resolution

Short summeries of the sessions can be found here.