Berkman Klein Center and the Harvard Law School Bicentennial

Harvard Law School was founded in 1817, and the founding of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society (now the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society) was officially announced in 1998 at HLS. The 2017-18 academic year thus marks both the Berkman Klein Center’s twentieth anniversary and HLS’s bicentennial. Although the Center is now an interfaculty initiative at Harvard -- with close ties to academic institutions across the university and a board of faculty directors drawn from the Law School, the Business School, the Graduate School of Design, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and beyond -- it maintains a strong institutional connections to HLS. The development of legal and regulatory frameworks to govern deployment and use of new technologies remains an important and vital strain throughout the Center’s work.

The Law School is putting together a number of great events over the course of this academic year to commemorate its two-hundredth anniversary, and we are pleased that the Berkman Klein Center community is playing a key role in this celebration. Of particular note -- during the upcoming two-day celebration of “HLS in the World’ on October 26th and 27th, the Law School is presenting a number of talks, panels, and related sessions with close ties to the Center and its broader community.  These include:

Tech, Law, and Law Teaching: Developing Impactful Interventions in the Law School Curriculum Around Coding and the Use of Technology
Friday, October 27, 2017
9:00 am - 10:00 am

Berkman Klein Center faculty co-director Christopher Bavitz will lead a conversation about the role of technology in the law school curriculum, with a particular emphasis on initiatives underway at Harvard Law School designed to teach tech skills (including the ability to write computer code) to law students.  

Additional participants include Kendra Albert (HLS '16 and presently a Clinical Instructional Fellow in the Center's Cyberlaw Clinic); Jack Cushman (HLS Lecturer on Law and Berkman Klein Fellow); Kate Darling (Berkman Klein Fellow); and Mitchel Resnick (faculty at the MIT Media Lab and founder of Scratch, a long-time collaborator with the Center and the Clinic on a number of tech and education initiatives).

National Security, Privacy, and the Rule of Law
Friday, October 27, 2017
11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Berkman Klein Center faculty chair Jonathan Zittrain leads a discussion that will explore the difficult decisions to be made around issues related to privacy, security, internet-aware applications, and technologies that permit untraceable communications, as they relate to state intelligence gathering, the cultivation and rallying of like-minded extremists, and a wide range of other potential effects and applications.

Additional participants include Alex Abdo (HLS '06 and Senior Staff Attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute), Cindy Cohn (Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation), Andrew McLaughlin (HLS '94, Co-Founder and Partner, Higher Ground Labs), Matt Olsen (HLS '88, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center), Bruce Schneier (Security Technologist and BKC Fellow), and Elliot Schrage (HLS ‘86, VIP Communications and Public Policy, Facebook).

Educating Global Lawyers
Friday, October 27, 2017
11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Berkman Klein Center co-director Ruth Okediji joins a panel discussion exploring how the large-scale forces that are transforming law practice–the globalization of economic activity and the important shift in that activity from the Global North to the emerging economies in the Global South; the exponential increases in the speed and sophistication of information technology; and the blurring together of traditional categories of organization and thought such as “public and private,” “law and business,” or “politics”–are likely to transform legal education as well.

Additional participants include David Wilkins (HLS ‘80, Professor of Law, HLS), Michele DeStefano (HLS ‘02, Professor, University of Miami Law School), C. Raj Kumar (HLS LL.M.‘00, Vice Chancellor and Professor, O.P. Jindal Global University), William Lee (Partner, WilmerHale), John Suh (CEO, LegalZoom).

Artificial Intelligence and the Practice of Law
Friday, October 27, 2017
2:00pm - 3:30 pm

Longtime Berkman Klein friends and collaborators Susan Crawford (John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law, HLS) and Ed Felten (Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs, Princeton University) join Stasia Kelly (Co-Managing Partner, DLA Piper), to discuss the effects of artificial intelligence on the practice of law.      

The Domestic Challenge of Globalization: What Policies are Necessary for Addressing Those Left Behind?
Friday, October 27, 2017
2:00pm - 3:30 pm

Berkman Klein co-director Mark Wu will lead a conversation about globalization, inequality, economic upheaval and other trends, including those related to technology and automation. Panelists will explore the types of domestic policies required to help better the costs associated with globalization, which are disproportionately borne by Americans’ pocketbooks

Additional participants include Sander “Sandy” Levin (HLS ‘57, Representative, United States Congress, 9th Congressional District of Michigan), Lawrence Summers (Charles W. Eliot Professor and President Emeritus, Harvard University), Robert B. Zoellick (HLS ‘81, Former President, World Bank Group.)

We hope all interested HLS students, alumni, staff, and faculty will join us for these timely discussions.