Yale Law School has multiple ISP-affiliated courses and seminars every semester, which include First Amendment; Intellectual Property; Internet Law; Artificial Intelligence, Robots, and the Law; Law and Disruptive Technology; and Technology Law.
The ISP also regularly sponsors Yale Law School reading groups that explore various aspects of the intersection of law, technology, and society. If you are interested in organizing a reading group, please contact Chinmayi Arun.
Led by Jisu Kim, Laurin Weissinger, and Ramesh Subramanian
Led by Jisu Kim and Michael Karanicolas
Spring 2019
Samantha Godwin and Elise Sugarman
Questions of moral responsibility are pervasive in law, politics and social theory. Many legal, political and moral questions might be understood as different forms of the question “what are the right conditions for attaching blame or attributing credit?” For example, when is someone culpable for “their” actions? What excuses are morally relevant? How much credit should someone get for achievements that are largely the product of their good luck? People tend to have both a strong intuition that a person’s intent determines their blameworthiness, but also that those who attempt murder should not be treated with the same gravity as those who successfully murder – how does that work? If someone sets a series of events into motion – such that an unintended negative consequence or an unintended positive consequence follows from their actions – do the intervening steps attenuate their responsibility and appropriate blame or praise in all cases or only some cases? If we have reason to doubt the extent of our own free will (however conceived), how does this implicate our capacity for moral responsibility and the fairness of treating others as morally responsible? This reading group’s exploration of moral responsibility includes issues of free will and determinism as they relate to moral responsibility, and theories of blameworthiness, praiseworthiness, excuses, justifications.
Spring 2019
Laurin Weissinger and Yiqun Ye
This reading group will focus on cybersecurity policy, speaking to its technical underpinnings as well as relevant social and legal questions that emerged with the spread of computing and its security issues. The main aim of this reading group is to learn about different aspects of what is normally understood as cybersecurity, discussing how these different issues interact, and how they do (or fail to) inform security objectives and policy making. To explore these issues, we will discuss a variety of topics, including but not limited to: internet infrastructure, hacking, cybercrime, IoT, encryption, surveillance, cyberwar, security regulation and governance but also upcoming challenges like AI and quantum computing.
Fall 2018
Sasha Dudding, Mailyn Fidler, Tiffany Li
As the world becomes increasingly digitized, privacy has become an issue of vital importance for lawyers, judges, scholars, and policymakers. Recent privacy controversies include the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, reports of government surveillance using (possibly faulty) facial recognition technologies, and DNA testing companies selling consumer genetic data to the pharmaceutical industry. This reading group will pursue advanced study of the changing right to privacy, exploring high-level privacy theories and cutting-edge, topical problems in privacy law. Materials and discussions will incorporate a diverse, interdisciplinary array of privacy perspectives and approaches, with a focus on how conceptions of privacy and identity have changed over time. The goal of this reading group is to encourage students to develop their own nuanced perspectives on privacy law and to provide an opportunity to engage in dialogue on the most pressing privacy issues of today and the future.
Spring 2018
Antonio Davola and Quirin Weinzeirl
On May 25, 2018 the global data protection regime will be reshaped, presumably fundamentally. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will enter into force - the common level playing field for more than 510 million EU-citizens. However, the GDPR does not yield at Europe's doorstep - rather, the EU fosters the “development of universal principles”. Signs are detectable today: Uber recently moved to applying worldwide unified data protection standards.
Facing the GDPR’s presumed importance for the 21st century’s global privacy framework, the Reading Group aims at studying the foundations of European data protection law as well as some of its most contested questions: the right to be forgotten, data exchange between the U.S. and the EU, and the GDPR’s global ambitions. In addition, we will look beyond the GDPR and consider further current issues of the digitalized economy, in areas where EU and U.S. regulations are likely to clash. Examples are the regulation of information intermediaries, of algorithms, and of self-driving cars.
Spring 2018
Thomas Kadri and Kate Klonick
This group seeks to discuss and engage in the dialogue around Internet law reform as it is currently presenting in active issues of legislation, litigation, agency control, private regulation, and public policy. The group will focus on three issues currently at the fore of debates over Internet law: (1) Section 230 reform; (2) net neutrality reform; and (3) private platform self-regulation and online speech.
Spring 2018
Catherine Crooke, Alexandra Eynon, and Ruthie Lazenby
The Images of Justice reading group addresses the intersections between the law and visual culture. Topics include photography and criminology, documentary film, design thinking, and architecture as they implicate the legal profession.
Spring 2018
Jack Balkin, Rebecca Crootof, Bethany Hill, Anat Lior, and George Wang
This reading group explores topics at the intersection of Law and Artificial Intelligence. Machine learning systems, algorithms, and other AI applications are transforming vital aspects of the economy and society—they influence what we see, hear, and often think. Decisions around when loans are approved, which job candidates are reviewed, and whether criminal defendants are deprived of their liberty are now often made by machines. The materials and discussions in this reading group asks students to grapple with how AI is impacting our lives now and into the future. We examine how these technologies interact with, challenge, and shape law and society going forward. This reading group provides a multidisciplinary survey of some of the key issues in space, and will immerse students in the on-going discourse between technological development and the law.
Spring 2018
Mason Marks
Medical science & technology change so rapidly that regulation cannot keep pace. Innovations in 3D-printing, gene editing, artificial intelligence, and mobile health technologies are changing the healthcare landscape. At the same time, healthcare costs are rising, and disparities in access to medical care are increasing. As we move further into the 21st Century, society will face challenging questions concerning the regulation of new medical technologies and how to ensure that new treatments remain accessible to those who need them. This reading group is designed to familiarize students with the ethical and legal issues raised by the changing healthcare system and rapidly emerging medical technologies.
Spring 2017
This informal, international, discussion-oriented reading group will explore the impact of Artificial Intelligence and robotics on law and society, through the lens of three main topics – Ethics, Regulation, and Liability.
Jack Balkin and Ignacio Cofone
Spring 2017
This reading group is a bottom-up take on the broad question of how and when technological change affects our social norms. It does so through the examples of privacy norms and antidiscrimination norms—norms that are long standing but changing along humanity’s history. And it does it for the technological change that has shaken social interactions the most in the last quarter of a century: big data.
Sean O’Brien
Spring 2017
This reading group will explore Digital Security and Operations Security concepts within the context of pervasive corporate and government surveillance, a reality exposed most prominently by the 2013 Edward Snowden disclosures. Snowden relied upon a mix of Free/Open-Source Software (FOSS) to communicate extremely sensitive data, despite powerful adversaries, because he simply “couldn’t trust” the proprietary alternatives. The contemporary lawyer and legal scholar may not be hunted daily by a nationstate but, nonetheless, faces a sea of complex software choices that effectively safeguard or undermine her civil liberties or those of her clients. This digital maze is further complicated by the increasing frequency and escalation of cyber attacks, massive data breaches, and the threat of global cyberwar on the horizon.
Sandra Ristovska and Helen Li
Spring 2017
The law has long been an institution that considers words to be the best vehicle for transporting its logic. Like many social and political institutions, the law associates words with reason, systematic thinking and deliberation, pushing aside the value of images as tools that work differently from words. When used, the law insists that visuals need words to anchor their legal meaning. Visuals and words, however, facilitate different processes of knowledge acquisition, and now as never before visual exhibits are important feature of the courtroom. This reading group is intended as a broad survey of the various ways in which images intersect with the law on the level of evidence and advocacy, highlighting the critical visual skills needed to assess the legal value of a wide range of visual media. As knowing how to ‘read’ images is closely linked to knowing how to work with images, the reading group will also include workshops on video production, such as storytelling, interviewing, shooting and editing. These workshops (~15 min) will take place during the regularly scheduled meetings following the discussion of the readings. Throughout the semester, scholars, advocates and filmmakers will deliver guest workshops and lectures, allowing students to interact with practitioners in the field.
Jean-Philippe Foegle
Fall 2016
The increasing globalization of data and the public disclosure of mass surveillance programs have led to culture clashes between the European Union and United Sates, revealing fundamental differences of opinion on the very nature of privacy. This reading group will explore the basics and history of data protection laws in the EU and United States, issues of mass surveillance and transborder data flow in the wake of the Schrems decision, and the right to be forgotten and the Google Spain ruling. We will attempt to finds approaches that reconcile EU and US understandings of privacy and data protection, and consider the role of international law in shaping a common understanding.
Rebecca Crootof
Spring 2015
New, high-tech weapons are celebrated for their ability to limit troop and civilian casualties, vilified for making war easier, and constantly compared favorably and unfavorably with human beings. They also raise a host of new legal questions, such as when a cyber-attack justifies commencing a war, or who should be held accountable for a war crime committed by a robot. In this reading group, we will discuss these and other novel legal, policy, and ethical issues presented by emerging weapons technologies.
Colin Agur and Asaf Lubin
Spring 2015
Much of our international relations revolve around intelligence collection and analysis. From the U-2 spy planes that uncovered the Soviet missile sites in Cuba to modern-day Iranian exiled dissidents claiming evidence of hidden nuclear facilities in Tehran, intelligence plays a major role in guiding world politics. Intercepted transmissions are used to determine the immanency of a threat in peacetime, and strategic reconnaissance serves a vital tool in making military proportionality assessments in wartime. Secret spies and geospatial imagery can offer evidence in managing well-functioning international financial sanctions regimes, or in attributing state responsibility for wrongful acts, or even in assigning individual criminal liability for international crimes. Intelligence plays such a cardinal role in our public world order that one might presume there to be well-established rules of international law, undergirded by a vibrant academic and jurisprudential discourse, that would govern the ways States compile, analyze, verify and promulgate intelligence. Instead, intelligence exits in a legal penumbra, lying at the margins of diverse legal regimes and at the edge of international legitimacy. The dominance of domestic law in intelligence debates forms the basis for a lotus world of action, one in which States may spy on each other – and on each other’s nationals – without restriction. In this reading group, we will explore these contentions further analyzing the complex relationship between international law and intelligence gathering. In doing so, we hope to highlight the origins and evolution of contemporary debates, and provoke discussion about the role international law can play in questions of national security.
BJ Ard, Colin Agur, and Ramesh Subramanian
Fall 2015
This reading group will examine telecommunications law- and policy-making in the United States. It will do so by looking at relevant markets, government institutions, debates specific to the media (radio, television, telephony, and the Internet) under FCC jurisdiction, the challenges of law- and policy-making in a period of technological convergence, and the future of telecom law and policy.
Telecommunications regulation is a complex and pressing topic in US public policy, as shown by recent debates over net neutrality, mergers by cable providers, and the perennial issues of access and pricing. In this reading group, we will study a varied set of texts (policy documents, court decisions, technical analyses, and essays) that together provide a historically informed and comprehensive overview of American telecommunications policy and its development. Our discussions will delve into debates in First and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the questions and challenges different media (the telephone, radio, television, and the Internet) pose for regulators, and the role of governments (at all levels) as regulators of the country’s communications networks.
We see this reading group as a complement to courses available to students at YLS, and as a useful preparation for those interested in deepening their knowledge of the policy-making process. We hope to create a set of discussions that help students as they apply for internships and jobs in academia, government, relevant NGOs, law firms, and the private sector.
Misha Guttentag, Ariel Dobkin, and Paul Henderson
Spring 2015
The study of technology law involves close examination of the interactions between many prominent and emerging areas of law. These areas range from intellectual property to First Amendment rights to constitutional protections for privacy. This study is made even more interesting by the fact that the pace of technological innovation constantly raises new challenges to existing doctrines and norms. Most importantly, through the lens of technology, we can examine how legal doctrines and social norms respond to fast change that affects large populations.
This intersection of the law and technology deserves study and deliberation. This reading group aims to bring together students from varied backgrounds to discuss these issues and develop their understandings. In so doing, we develop frameworks for how law might respond to future, unforeseen innovations in the 21st century.
The syllabus for this reading group includes required readings from a variety of sources, including U.S. and international court decisions, law journal articles, book chapters, and articles from newspapers and blogs. It is separated into four sections: Access to the Internet, Expression on the Internet, Privacy, and FutureTech.
Colin Agur, Valerie Belair-Gagnon, and Nathana O’Brien
Fall 2014
In recent years, with the rapid growth of the Internet, mobile networks, and related technologies, the United States has become home to a vibrant and multifaceted information society. The rise of the information society has implications for our understanding of free speech, privacy, intellectual property, and other elements of national and international law-making and practices. At the same time as we re-think legal concepts, we must also reflect on the changing nature of individual agency, access to information, and democratic participation.
BJ Ard and Kiel Brennan-Marquez
Spring 2014
The purpose of this reading group is to think critically about the role that scholarship plays in a networked age. The contemporary legal scholar faces diametrically opposed mandates: her work must be highly context-specific but also, and at once, able to shed light on an increasingly complex bigger picture. Against this backdrop, what makes scholarship successful (or comparatively successful)? The question has analytic, methodological, and stylistic dimensions. We will strive to examine all three. To do so, the group will take up classic articles in the “information society” vein—privacy, intellectual property, law and technology—and ask what about them works well, and what might be improved. We will also incorporate opportunities, as desired, for students to hone and polish their own work.
Colin Agur, Valerie Belair-Gagnon & Kerry Monroe
Spring 2014
This interactive and discussion-oriented reading group looks at key debates in media law in a digital context. The group is particularly interested in the current socio-cultural settings of media-related laws that affect issues such as free speech, government accountability, individual and civil rights, media companies and media production. By addressing these issues in the framework of this single course, and through key texts and prominent guest speakers, the reading group will provide its participants with a solid foundation in media law theory and practice to face current challenges in the field. It will outline key theory, concepts and practical cases of media law and policy in the digital age and furnish participants with tools to analyze contemporary media law issues in new media environments.