Privacy Law's Role in an Information Economy

Identifies the loss of online privacy as a threat to multi-dimensional social selfhood. Argues online privacy law should work towards restoring the roleplay that underwrites social identity formation. Contends online privacy law should pursue that end through thoughtful “legal role-scripting.” Proposes "privacy governance" law as a new form of online privacy law designed to empower Internet users to engage in self-constructive roleplay. 

Cardozo Law Review (forthcoming 2024)

Content Moderation Regulation as Legal Role-Scripting

Introduces role theory into the content moderation discourse. Contends content moderation regulations are poised to define the basic contours of what it means to be a “speech platform” because the role remains unsettled. Evaluates how the Communications Decency Act failed to articulate coherent roles within the content moderation relationship. Presents current content moderation regulatory reforms'—including the PACT Act in Congress, state platform-common carriage laws, their judicial review, and the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzalez v. Google—role scripts for speech platforms and individuals, to direct attention to urgent questions about whether they are likely to produce a desirable content moderation relationship and an online speech ecosystem that meets the public’s needs.

Indiana Law Journal (forthcoming 2024)

The Exclusive Right to Customize? 

(with Mark Lemley)

Evaluates the scope and limitations of trademark law’s application to after-market customization of consumer goods, such as cars, watches, and sneakers. Suggests two adaptations of trademark defenses that should protect expressive after-market customizations and uses of branded goods as “component parts” of finished custom goods from trademark suits, while allowing mark holders to prevent customizations that cause trademark harms.

Boston University Law Review

Democratizing Platform Privacy

Analogized the data political economy to the Progressive-era labor political economy, developed a model of democratic private governance drawn from industrial democracy theory, and analyzed how Internet users might make privacy norm-formation more democratic through collective bargaining.

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

Navigating The Ambiguities and Uncertainties of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 (with Simon Frankel)

Analyzed the meaning of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 in light of its plain language, purpose and structure, and legislative history. Suggested sensible interpretations of ambiguous provisions to aid courts as they apply the statute to revive time-barred claims for the recovery of art stolen during the Holocaust.

Cited favorably in Zuckerman v. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 928 F.3d 186 (2d Cir. 2019).

Columbia Journal of Law & The Arts

The Mark of a Culture: The Efficacy and Propriety of Using Trademark Law to Deter Cultural Appropriation

Examined cultural groups’ use of trademark law to protect cultural property from appropriation by group outsiders, argued such use largely misunderstands trademark law’s purposes and may be counterproductive to cultural groups’ flourishing, and specified the limited ways trademark tools and cultural appropriation deterrence might align.

First place in Stanford Law School Intellectual Property Writing Award and first place in the Federal Circuit Bar Association George Hutchinson Writing Competition.

Federal Circuit Bar Journal

e-Citizenship: Trust in Government, Political Efficacy, and Political Participation in the Internet Era

Surveyed 1000 Internet users and ran a statistical analysis of the relationship between their online engagement with government and feelings of trust in government and political efficacy. Revealed a statistically significant relationship between a high level of online government interaction and strong feelings of trust and efficacy.

Journal of Electronic Media & Policy