276PS sec. 001 - Information Privacy Law (Summer 2025)
Instructor: Erik R Stallman (view instructor's teaching evaluations - degree students only)
View all teaching evaluations for this course - degree students only
Units: 3
Grading Designation: Graded
Mode of Instruction: In-Person
Meeting:
MTuWThF 2:00 PM - 4:35 PM
Location: Law 240
From June 30, 2025
To July 21, 2025
Enrollment info:
Enrolled: 0
Waitlisted: 0
Enroll Limit: 35
As of: 01/13 08:14 AM
Ten years ago, a handful of practitioners could be called "privacy lawyers," but now thousands consider themselves experts in information privacy law. Today almost all modern businesses need advice about information privacy law. While the roots of privacy law in the U.S. started with a right to be let alone, modern business models, the needs of the administrative state, law enforcement priorities, and our own behavior complicate approaches based upon seclusion or secrecy. This course will explore the roots of US privacy law, its evolution in the 20th century, and the challenges of regulating information in the modern era where institutions and "data subjects" need and reveal information constantly, but also seek basic dignity and safety from harm. Privacy law consists of torts, contracts, constitutional law, statutory law, and soft law norms. We will explore how these laws and norms apply to long-standing problems as well as emerging issues, such as efforts to regulate potential harms flowing from personal information in the inputs and outputs of artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
Erik Stallman is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. He is also a Faculty Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. His primary interests are regulation of access to information and open internet issues.
Since 2005, Stallman has worked on intellectual property and telecommunications law and policy in Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, nongovernmental organizations, and private practice. Prior to coming to Berkeley, he served as policy counsel at Google, covering copyright, telecommunications, and media regulation. Before that, he led the Open Internet Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), where he was also General Counsel. Earlier, he served as counsel and policy advisor to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren at the US House of Representatives. He was also an Honors Attorney in the FCC Media Bureau and an associate at Steptoe & Johnson.
Stallman is a 2003 graduate of Berkeley Law and was a law clerk for Judge Susan P. Graber of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Exam Notes: (TH) Take-home examination
(Subject to change by faculty member only through the first two weeks of instruction)
Course Category: Intellectual Property and Technology Law
This course is listed in the following sub-categories:
AI Law and Regulation
If you are the instructor or their FSU, you may add a file like a syllabus or a first assignment to this page.
Readers:
No reader.
Books:
Instructor has not yet confirmed their textbook order, please check back later.