Technology Law and Policy

Subsidies offered by the federal government for the purchase of new electric vehicles (EVs) may actually increase total greenhouse gas emissions without similar aid for secondhand buyers, concludes a new study led by Ashley Nunes, Ph.D., a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program.

Robert Zoellick, the U.S. diplomat who helped negotiate the end of the Cold War, says Vladimir Putin’s claims about Ukraine are part of a disinformation campaign.

A Harvard Law School reading group debates how the law should manage self-driving cars, A.I.-generated art, and other algorithmic technology.

For international law expert Svitlana Starosvit LL.M. ’13 S.J.D. ’22, Russia's military assault on Ukraine is horrifying yet unsurprising because, she says, “We Ukrainians know Putin all too well."

A Harvard Law class explores possibilities for a U.S. central bank digital currency, which would be sheltered from the wild fluctuations in value for which crypto is known.

Since 2007, Gabriel Swiney has served in the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser. His work in space law, he says, has allowed him to merge his experience and his passion to help future generations chart a safer, fairer path to the stars.

A new Harvard Law initiative examines the legal and ethical aspects of therapeutic psychedelics

A wide range of books by faculty, from a collection of essays on the ethics of consumer genetic testing to a look at the fate of constitutional institutions in populist regimes to a delightful children's book by a legal philosopher

The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University has announced the appointment of Susan Hendrickson ’93 as its new executive director.

Social media’s business model of personalized virality is incompatible with democracy, agreed experts at a recent Harvard Law School discussion on the state of democracy.

At a Harvard Law School Library Book Talk, Martha Minow, along with Vicki Jackson and Nikolas Bowie, discussed why the press is in danger — and how to save it.

Leaked revelations about Instagram’s impact on teens have united Republicans and Democrats in considering legal reforms, say Harvard Law School scholars.

At a Federalist Society event, David French ’94 says government “should keep its hands off” social media and argues that support for free speech is waning across the political spectrum.

Helping key players across Massachusetts — including the City of Boston and environmental nonprofits — reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 is a focus for the Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School.

A new study led by Dr. Ashley Nunes, a fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, concluded that, counterintuitively, fleets of electric, autonomous taxis could dramatically increase energy consumption and emissions that contribute to climate change — not reduce them.

Harvard Law Today recently spoke with homeland security expert Juliette Kayyem ’95 about what the U.S. can do to deter future ransomware attacks.

Deception spreads faster than truth on social media. Who — if anyone — should stop it?

Harvard University Professor and former Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow argues for a new Fairness Doctrine and other reforms in a National Constitution Center panel on free speech and media.

Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95 appeared as a witness for the Senate Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights on June 15 to discuss the current state of home technologies and antitrust.

Harvard Law School’s Christopher T. Bavitz, the WilmerHale Clinical Professor of Law, has been appointed as vice dean for experiential and clinical education.

Health law has become especially timely in this year of COVID-19 vaccines and revitalized Obamacare. But for graduating student Phebe Hong ’21, it’s a passion that began in high school.

Professor Noah Feldman, who first proposed the idea of the Oversight Board to Facebook, weighs in on its decision to deplatform President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

A recent event hosted by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society explored how young Black people are using technology for activism around the world.

As Harvard Law students across the world logged onto Zoom this fall to connect to their professors and peers, Sidharth Chauhan LL.M. ’21 took virtual education a step further.

It’s a scene we unfortunately see too often now: A white woman pulls out her phone to call the police to patrol Black people in public spaces. They become memes, the kind that are studied by Apryl Williams, a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

Should smoking be among the pre-existing health risks that qualify people for priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine? Harvard Law public health expert Carmel Shachar says the answer is yes. 

The Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School is joining forces with the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy, its counterpart at Yale Law School, to host a seminar series reflecting on ethical and legal issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the 2020 Tanner Lecturer on Human Values at Clare Hall, Cambridge, Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain explores the clash of free speech and public health online.

Harvard Law Professor Ruth Okediji believes recent events can reinvigorate American democracy and serve as a lesson for the world.

Harvard Law experts Yochai Benkler and evelyn douek weigh in on the suspension of President Trump’s social media accounts and potential First Amendment implications.

The music industry is no stranger to legal dispute. From high-profile cases involving Napster, Inc. to the many legal trappings that accompany artists throughout the creative process, the law has continued to evolve along with music. That's Student Practice Organization the Recording Artists Project (RAP) come in.

Even if there was no COVID-19, online courts would still be the wave of the future: This idea was the starting point for a recent webinar, “Online Courts: Perspectives from the Bench and the Bar,” a half-day event convened by the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession.

Public health expert Carmel Shachar discusses the COVID-19 vaccine, who is likely to get it first, and whether people can be required to get vaccinated.

The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society researchers Yochai Benkler and Robert Faris document how polarized media in the United States shape political discourse and the 2020 election.

Experts gathered this week to discuss the ethical, social, and legal implications of technological advancements that facilitate the early detection of dementia.

“The Connected Parent,” a new book by John Palfrey ’01 and Urs Gasser LL.M. ’03  is a practical guide for addressing concerns brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and navigating an increasingly digital world.

Professor Jim Greiner at the Access to Justice Lab is aiming to find out whether the practice of law can be transformed by using evidence to determine which legal interventions are safe and effective, both for individuals in the justice system and society as a whole.

Ahead of the 2020 presidential election in the United States, experts from the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society convened to discuss how platforms are approaching mis- and disinformation and what they can improve going forward.

Andrew H. Choi ’23 was eager for a serious challenge in his first Army posting, so he chose as radically different an environment as he could imagine: Fairbanks, Alaska.

By March 17, just two weeks after Texas reported its first case of COVID-19, Judge Emily Miskel ’08 was back on the figurative bench, presiding over a one-hour virtual temporary restraining order hearing from home.

A month ahead of elections in Myanmar, the International Human Rights Clinic and 18 organizations released a major report documenting and analyzing the role that hate speech, rampant misinformation campaigns, and ultranationalism have played in the resurgence of oppression and human rights violations in the country.

In an effort to combat multiple potential vectors of attack on the 2020 U.S. election, two Berkman Klein Center affiliates have published a package of “tabletop exercises,” freely available to decisionmakers and the public to simulate realistic scenarios in which disinformation threatens to disrupt the 2020 election.

In the “good old days” of cybersecurity risk, we only had to worry about being hacked or downloading malware. But the stakes have ramped up considerably in the past decade, say Berkman Klein directors James Mickens and Jonathan Zittrain.

In an interview with Harvard Law Today, Carmel Shachar, executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, says that political interference in the FDA’s process for ensuring that a vaccine is both safe and effective “opens the door to a public health disaster.”

Two clinics at HLS— the Cyberlaw Clinic and the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic—partner on a case involving warrantless device searches at the U.S. border

Cass Sunstein ’78, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, has been tapped by the World Health Organization to chair its Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health.

“Confused,” “frustrating,” “fragmented,” “acute,” and “a reckoning” were just some of the ways three health care experts described the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic during a recent Berkman Klein virtual discussion.