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TechLaw is a Program of the James E. Rogers College of Law

A Brighter Future at

The Intersection of Law, Tech, and Business

The University of Arizona Law's TechLaw program

Examining issues on both side of the law-and-technology nexus.

TechLaw takes a distinctive approach to cross-disciplinary expertise in technology policy that is significantly more grounded in theory and empirical evidence than most other academic programs. We channel technology to solve societal problems while responsibly managing the risks involved. Our research and education theorizes, empirically studies, and actually builds technologies to serve the human quest for a free and just society.

Conversations with Faculty

TechLaw faculty regularly engage the public and contribute to open discussion about the impact of new technologies.

Upcoming Events

Fall 2022 TechLaw Conference:

Information as Medicine

Information communications technologies and data are now among the tools that doctors and patients frequently use to diagnose or treat health problems, and by all accounts, the use of Big Data, AI, telemedicine, and other information technologies is sure to grow. However, as information technologies begin to encroach on spaces and decisions traditionally inhabited by doctors, pharmaceutical drugs, or invasive tests, they are subjected to the same regulations that have constrained physicians and pharmaceutical companies in the past….

Focus area: AI and Big Data, Privacy Problem-Solving, Free Speech

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Research and Policy Work

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The Organizations behind TechLaw

Partners and Affiliated Programs

Discourse and Research from TechLaw AZ

Focus Area: Free Speech

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Free speech

Legal theorists and lawmakers have always struggled to fully understand the purpose and bounds of the right to free speech, and the challenges have multiplied with today’s communications technology. Publication and distribution of speech is no longer expensive. The bottlenecks of the industrial era media (such as newspapers and broadcasters) must now compete with websites and social media platforms. Libel, privacy invasions, and wide-spread gossip are no longer problems exclusive the celebrity class as all private individuals have the potential to be the object of fascination, ridicule, and derision in the searchable public sphere. And in an information economy, economic regulations are more likely to be information regulations (and, thus, will have to tangle with First Amendment precedent.)
Daphne Keller, When Platforms Do the State’s Bidding, Who Is Accountable? Not the Government, Says Israel’s Supreme Court, Lawfare (February 7, 2022) (citing Derek Bambauer’s work).
Discourse Type: In the Media
Focus Areas: Free speech
The Cyberlaw Podcast, Waging War in a Networked Age (February 28, 2022) (featuring Jane Bambauer as a panelist)
Discourse Type: In the Media
Focus Areas: Free speech

Discourse and Research from TechLaw AZ

Focus Area: Innovation for Justice

Innovation for Justice

The Innovation for Justice Program (i4J) is a social justice innovation lab that designs, builds, and tests disruptive solutions to the justice gap. Housed at both the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law and the University of Utah Eccles School of Business, i4J is the nation’s first and only cross-jurisdiction + cross-discipline legal innovation lab. i4J applies design- and systems-thinking methodologies to expose inequalities in the justice system and create new, replicable, and scalable strategies for legal empowerment.
Lyle Moran, How a Social Justice Innovation Lab Is Developing New Types of Legal Services, ABA Journal’s Legal Rebels podcast (February 16, 2022) (featuring Stacy Butler and discussing the Innovation for Justice lab)
Discourse Type: In the Media
This report contains findings and recommendations from usability testing of the State of Utah’s online dispute resolution (ODR) platform. Utah’s ODR platform is a web-based alternative dispute resolution tool that provides parties in small claims debt collection actions with an opportunity to resolve their cases online. The report includes results
Discourse Type: Policy Papers

Discourse and Research from TechLaw AZ

Focus Area: Preparing for Quantum Technologies

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Quantum Networking Technologies

Scientists around the world are quickly learning to leverage the power of quantum physics to supercharge digital technologies. Quantum Computing is the most well-known application, and its development can potentially enable many benefits (i.e. pattern recognition and simulations) as well as risks (i.e. breaking public encryption). But researchers are also making fast progress in the development of Quantum Networking. Quantum networks take advantage of the mysterious-but-predictable properties of superposition and entanglement by sending particles prepared as “qubits” in a quantum-entangled state through a specialized communications architecture. These quantum networks, and the quantum Internet that they will eventually form, are likely to bring another sea change to how we communicate and how our devices work. They will enable quantum-based data encryption, they will facilitate networks of quantum sensors and computers that can manage autonomous vehicles and power grids, and they will create the infrastructure for blind quantum computing and a robust Internet of Things.

Discourse and Research from TechLaw AZ

Focus Area: Regulatory Science

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Regulatory Science

A partnership between University of Arizona Health Sciences and the James E. Rogers College of Law, the Regulatory Science Program exists to identify and pioneer smart forms of regulation and to train the next generation of advocates, regulators, scientists and clinicians about best practices in this area. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines “regulatory science” as “the science of developing new tools, standards and approaches to assess the safety, efficacy, quality and performance of all FDA-regulated products.”
Published in the Lancet Background : Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve diagnosis. Yet people are often reluctant to trust automated systems, and some patient populations may be particularly so. Methods: After structured interviews with patients, a randomized, blinded, factorial survey experiment placed mock patients into clinical vignettes
Discourse Type: Scholarship
Published in the Lancet Background : Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve diagnosis. Yet people are often reluctant to trust automated systems, and some patient populations may be particularly so. Methods: After structured interviews with patients, a randomized, blinded, factorial survey experiment placed mock patients into clinical vignettes
Discourse Type: Scholarship

Discourse and Research from TechLaw AZ

Focus Area: Intellectual Property & Entrepreneurship

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Intellectual Property & Entrepreneurship

Intellectual property (IP) law is one of the fastest-growing areas of law. It deals with building the legal foundation for managing innovation and promoting progress, whether that’s assisting researchers working on a new cancer treatment or helping artists and performers protect their music, designs and other creations.
This comment, coauthored by Prof. Jane Bambauer, addresses Accountable Tech’s Petition asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to initiate a rulemaking to prohibit tailored advertising as an unfair method of competition. We make five main points that cast serious doubt on the wisdom and viability of such a rulemaking. First,
Discourse Type: Policy Papers
Derek Bambauer and twenty-five other trademark experts submitted a letter opposing a bill that would expand trademark law in a way that could significantly curtail comparison shopping online.
Discourse Type: Policy Papers
Forthcoming in the Minnesota Law Review U.S. trademark law often permits simultaneous use of the same brand by multiple entities. Its approach to deciding when and how this concurrent use is permissible has become antiquated, rooted in outdated assumptions about trade and telecommunications. By using the physical location of mark
Discourse Type: Scholarship

Discourse and Research from TechLaw AZ

Focus Area: Cybersecurity

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Cybersecurity

Recent data hacks of corporations using software like SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange, as well as of critical infrastructure like Colonial Pipeline, have taken cyber-attacks to a new level, demonstrating the vulnerability of our public and private networks and the ability of hackers to cripple society with the stroke of a key. The cybersecurity industry is booming and demand for legal professionals with knowledge of the field is high.
Cybersecurity: An Interdisciplinary Problem offers a comprehensive introduction to the challenges of cybersecurity from legal, business, economic, and technical perspectives. This textbook provides an interdisciplinary introduction to each of these fields that is at once accessible to students and teachers from each but sophisticated enough to be useful to those
Discourse Type: Books
Focus Areas: Cybersecurity
2021 University of Illinois Law Review Online 170 (Apr. 30, 2021) Technology policy issues were a dominant theme in the 2020 presidential election campaign. In his first hundred days, President Biden has taken a steady, incremental approach to the formation and rollout of his technology initiatives. Four trends have emerged.
Discourse Type: Scholarship

Discourse and Research from TechLaw AZ

Focus Area: Privacy Problem Solving

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Privacy Problem Solving

The Privacy Problem-Solving Project (“the Project”) has a mission to translate what we know so far about the law, economics, and psychology of privacy into concrete business practice guidance and model legislation. Faculty, research fellows, and students who take Prof. Bambauer’s privacy law course form a multidisciplinary team to analyze a problem related to personal data collection and use. We do so with sensitivity to the pragmatic goals and realistic costs and benefits that the problem raises. This work involves translating many of the insights that have come from research in law, economics, and psychology into practical steps, rules-of-thumb, and best practices.
Timothy B. Lee, Why the Census Invented Nine Fake People in One House, Slate (March 2, 2022) (quoting Jane Bambauer)
Discourse Type: In the Media
Cyberlaw Podcast, Episode 398: Scarlett Johannsson Finally Makes an Appearance on the Cyberlaw Podcast (March 14, 2022) (featuring Jane Bambauer as a panelist)
Discourse Type: In the Media

Discourse and Research from TechLaw AZ

Focus Area: International Law & Technology

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International Law & Technology

Data, speech, and the effects of technology travel the globe with much greater ease than people and goods do. As a result, the usual tools for managing state sovereignty and cross-border relations are put under stress. International research collaborations create friction with export control laws. U.S. government surveillance affects how privacy law is interpreted in the EU and other countries. And differences in speech-related laws and norms cause governments and global companies to become intimately engaged in content moderation and censorship.
The Atlantic (April 25, 2020) In this provocative essay, Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods argue that American tech firms’ mission to export First Amendment values to the rest of the world was a misguided failure.
Discourse Type: Policy Papers
Andrew Woods contributed to this report of the UN Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee and testified before the UN Security Council on the same topic.
Discourse Type: Policy Papers

Discourse and Research from TechLaw AZ

Focus Area: Space Law

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Space Law

We are seeing a rapid increase in the number of objects placed in orbit around the earth, as well as an increase in the number of services and communications that each satellite can perform. The consequences are wide-ranging, from surveillance and national security to detecting early warning signs of natural disasters to mining materials in outer space to the accumulation of clutter in orbit.

Discourse and Research from TechLaw AZ

Focus Area: AI and Big Data

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AI and Big Data

Machines are sorting, scoring, and judging us with consequences big and small. They also help each of us sort and select our options on how to spend our time, money, or effort. AI and machine learning algorithms can often improve accuracy and efficiency, but they open big philosophical questions about how to prioritize competing values. Ideally, decisions should be made based on accurate assessments that are fair, transparent, and free from bias, but these goals are sometimes in conflict. Moreover, making improvements on any of them may compromise efficiency and privacy. And if AI outperforms human decision-makers along all of these dimensions, it is still possible that people have a preference for human systems that should not, or cannot, be ignored. TechLaw faculty have been at the forefront of public discourse to help identify and illuminate the competing societal interests that must be taken into account when AI is deployed responsibly.
This acclaimed Economic and Dignitary Torts casebook has been completely revised to include the most up-to-date and comprehensive coverage in the field. The new edition includes hundreds of recent cases that illustrate important contemporary contexts such as the problem of defamation on the Internet; the application of common law privacy
Discourse Type: Books
This report, produced for the Knight First Amendment Institute, proposes legal protection for certain research and news gathering projects focused on platforms.
Discourse Type: Policy Papers
Focus Areas: AI and Big Data
This Brookings essay explains the results of original research testing the conditions under which people tend to prefer human decision-makers over algorithmic decision-makers, even when the algorithms are more accurate.
Discourse Type: Policy Papers
Focus Areas: AI and Big Data

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