Information Privacy Law

3 units

This course serves as an introduction to the dynamic field of information privacy law. The goal of the course is to equip students with the vocabulary, legal toolkit, and contextual knowledge to enter the practice of law in this rapidly-expanding practice area, whether in privacy or AI law groups. The course will trace the development and meanings of privacy in American law from the famous 1890 Harvard Law Review article "The Right to Privacy" by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis to the modern problems of privacy in the information age. Particular emphasis will be placed upon modern policy problems involving privacy, including privacy and the media, Fourth Amendment law, government surveillance, health privacy, Internet privacy, data security and breaches, FTC regulation, emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, and the problems caused by government and private-sector databases. The focus of the course is on US law, but we will necessarily examine the internationalization of the field, including the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), issues of cross-border data transfer, and the "Right to Be Forgotten." Attendance and participation are essential. Please note that laptop computers are not permitted in class. There will be a blindly-graded final exam.