June 2015 – The 8th Annual Privacy Law Scholars Conference

The 8th Annual Privacy Law Scholars Conference

Thursday and Friday, June 4-5, 2015

The Claremont Hotel, Berkeley, CA

PLSC assembles privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world to discuss current issues and foster greater connections between academia and practice. It brings together privacy law scholars, privacy scholars from other disciplines (economics, philosophy, political science, computer science), and practitioners (industry, legal, advocacy, and government).

PLSC is a paper workshop. There are no published proceedings, and after the event, papers are not available. Because authors’ drafts are works in progress, we do not publicly release these writings, nor do we publicize them (no Tweeting, blogging, etc.), as authors’ ideas are often inchoate and need incubation for full development.

At PLSC, papers workshops are led by a “commenter” who facilitates a discussion among participants on an author’s paper. Authors are encouraged to participate in “listening” mode. There are no panels or talking head events at PLSC.

All participants are expected to read and be prepared to discuss one paper per session (usually a total of 8 papers), and thus PLSC requires significant preparation. We recommended that participants devote 1.5 to 2 days of reading to prepare prior to the conference.

PLSC is an annual event, alternating between Berkeley Law and The George Washington University School of Law. Participation is by invitation only. Last year, PLSC had 260 participants.

PLSC is an invitation-only conference and with 270 participants this year, we are beyond our physical capacity for invites.

UC Berkeley School of Law certified that this activity has been approved for 11.25 hours CLE credit by the State Bar of California. (6 hours Thursday, 5.25 hours Friday).

PLSC 2016

PLSC 2016 will be held at the George Washington University Marvin Center on June 2-3, 2016.

International Association of Privacy Professionals Paper Award

The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) is sponsoring an award for two papers presented at PLSC. The two winning authors will each receive $2500 from IAPP, an opportunity to present the paper at the IAPP Privacy Academy 2015 (travel will be provided for up to two authors of each paper), and an opportunity to publish an abstract or summary of the paper in the Privacy Advisor. The criteria are overall excellence and relevance to the practice of privacy law.

Facebook Pre-PLSC Conference

Facebook is hosting a pre-PLSC workshop titled privacy@scale.


Keynote: Professor William J. Cuddihy

Professor Cuddihy is author of the seminal The Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning 602-1791. This work, which reviews almost 1,200 years of history, has been praised by scholars as “monumental,” as the Iliad of search and seizure, and as an “absolutely essential volume for any scholar of constitutional history, criminal procedure, or the Fourth Amendment.” It was cited numerous times by Justice O’Connor, who called it, “one of the most exhaustive analyses of the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment ever undertaken,” and more recently, it was invoked in the Riley case. We are delighted to welcome Professor Cuddihy to the PLSC community. Professor Cuddihy’s book is available at Oxford University Press, and detailed reviews of it have been published by Tracey Maclin and Julia Grace Mirabella and by Thomas K. Clancy. Cuddihy’s Ph.D. thesis, on which his book is based, is available on Proquest.