Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/t...

Excited that our paper with @thelior.bsky.social @mbkugler.bsky.social , “Can Consumers Protect Themselves Against Privacy Dark Patterns?” is a winner of the (@futureofprivacy’s or @futureofprivacy.bsky.social’s) 16th Annual Privacy Papers for Policymakers Award! Read more: fpf.org/press-releas...

And to have the chance to exorcise the ghosts of the Pats loss? Unreal stuff.

Bobo has always been the Seahawks’ secret weapon. Saved him for the right time.

Alex Pretti - who DHS labeled a domestic terrorist - honoring a veteran that passed away in the ICU.

We are calling this the Cale Mary right?

Caleb makes the new Best Throw In Bears History every week

I got to the part in this story where someone SYNTHESIZED A DRUG THAT GIVES SOMEONE PARKINSON’S OVERNIGHT and went 😮 😧 😮 😧 😮 😧 😩

Dark patterns are in the news again, this time with antitrust implications, as well as privacy.

Downzoning was used by cities around the world to preserve neighborhood aesthetics & protect property values. New evidence from Chicago in @findingspress.org ⏬ shows downzoning's effects over several decades: —Massive drop in housing construction —Higher home prices —Increased racial segregation

Former UVA president Jim Ryan, who resigned over the summer due to pressure from the Trump Administration, just shared this 12-page letter with the Faculty Senate, detailing his experience with the Board of Visitors and DOJ. It's a surreal--and troubling--read. drive.google.com/file/d/1Is6x...

Can confirm that travel out of LGA is brutal this evening. Numerous planes stuck on the tarmac despite many cancellations and delayed departures. Now 3 hours late and counting with no end in sight. Pilot is getting virtually no guidance from air traffic control. I guess this I the new normal.

wheeeeeeeeee!

Thanks to @jtlg.bsky.social for inviting me to discuss my 2007 book review, Wealth Without Markets? in his Cornell Tech seminar later today. It was super-fun to revisit my debate with Yochai Benkler after so many years, with the benefit of hindsight. www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/556_p1zn...

On the 575th pitch! What. A. Game.

My newest published paper is out! It's about TikTok. It's also about the constitutionality of U.S. data privacy regulation. I don't know which topic is more popular - could someone with a teen ask? If you're interested in either, download it below. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I’m honored to be giving this upcoming lecture at my alma mater. Go Bears!

Public service announcement: In iOS26, you can make those incessant political fundraising texts stop. Go to Settings>Apps>Messages>Screen Unknown Senders and enable it. Now you won’t get a notification when someone random texts you and their message will go to a separate folder you can always check.

New book out now from ‪@universitypress.cambridge.org‬! Law and the 100-Year Life, co-edited by Solomon Center scholars, reimagines how laws and the institutions they shape—from labor to healthcare—must evolve in a world where more of us than ever will live to 100. law.yale.edu/solomon-cent...

We just posted a major new study of AI models and books, showing that some (but not all) models memorize large portions of some (but not all) books after training on the books3 database With A. Feder Cooper and Amy Cyphert, among others arxiv.org/pdf/2505.12546

Aziz Huq and @thelior.bsky.social shared legal insights alongside Chicago Quantum Exchange director David Awschalom at a panel moderated by Robert W. Karr Jr., a partner at Barnes & Thornburg LLP. The discussion kicked off an interdisciplinary CQE–led effort aimed at strengthening the growing field.

Big news on the constitutionality of tower dumps / geofence warrants…

You never know who you are going to run into on the UChicago campus. Thanks to Transportation Secretary @petebuttigieg.bsky.social for spending time teaching our students at the Institute of Politics and cheerfully indulging our faculty paparazzi.

I enjoyed two recent empirical papers on AI+Law, but realized they have somewhat different implications—in particular, about whether AI tools are actually useful for lawyers, or are too likely to err. I wrote up a blog post thinking through how to reconcile them: www.wilftownsend.net/p/is-ai-actu...

Picking a fight with Susman Godfrey is “land war in Asia” levels of foolish.

The Authoritarian Commons by Shitong Qiao "Documents and insightfully analyzes how the development of homeowners’ associations (HoAs) in China generated an ongoing democratic revolution in hundreds of thousands of neighborhoods." Out Now #LawSky

Brilliant (as always) piece by @bridgetfahey.bsky.social on why gov’t control over data is of constitutional moment. Yes it implicates societal and individual privacy concerns but also structural, constitutional grabs of power. Brava. Read www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

This is a massive setback for US transportation policy and yet another blow to environmental protection.

Landlords around the U.S. would be allowed to give tenants three days’ notice or less before evicting them, under federal legislation introduced last week that would strip away tenant protections put in place during the pandemic.

My new book, You Can't Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads: Angelo Herndon's Fight for Freedom, is out today. lithub.com/josephine-ba... Thanks to my family, friends, colleagues, and @wwnorton.bsky.social for helping me write about Herndon's fight for free speech and assembly.

Sarah Lee Best, Penn Law '21, was among the other brilliant and much-loved souls taken from us by this tragic plane crash. Sarah simply radiates kindness. She transforms classrooms, schools, and ultimately anything and anyone lucky enough to meet her. 1/3 www.bbc.com/news/article...

Yet another illustration of why data minimization requirements are needed in US privacy law. There’s no good justification to store so much customer geolocation information.

Hey, Property profs:

New draft article! “Standard Textualism” papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... Main claim: Faithful adherence to modern textualism would produce far more standard-like (as opposed to rule-like) law than people have realized. Important implications for textualists AND critics of textualism!

This goes on the reading pile immediately!

A good moment to post for the first time. As I just said on a listserv: Tiktok "is the most pro-data-privacy/pro-data-protection opinion the Supreme Court has ever issued! Now given the track record, maybe that's not saying a lot. And given the unusual context, who knows what can be made of this?"

Prof. @thelior.bsky.social explores whether public awareness is key to overcoming dark patterns. His 2021 paper illuminated challenges posed by the tactic. Now, he explores potential solutions. “The nature of social science research is that whenever you answer one question, it opens up five more.”

Do you want to do the right thing and read this interesting paper now, or would you rather risk everything and read it later, when it might be too late?

Whether you care about fairness or fiscal responsibility, cutting the IRS’s enforcement budget (as many Republicans have proposed) would be an absolute disaster. New evidence from back-to-back studies in the latest @qjeharvard.bsky.social ... (1/4)

Our new research paper just posted! It asks whether dark patterns (manipulative online interfaces) can thwart users who are trying to make privacy-protective choices on a video streaming site. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... We find that dark patterns are very potent even when users have that goal.

My sense has been that most discussions of the TikTok case have been consumed by questions the Court might not answer. So I've published a post on why the #SCOTUS might uphold the legislation based solely on the protection-of-U.S.-person-data rationale. balkin.blogspot.com/2025/01/tikt...

I ran an experiment to see if any UChicago 1Ls actually read the boilerplate ABA learning outcomes at the end of a 4-page Property law syllabus. Result: One of my students spotted the offer and claimed the free casebook a few hours after I posted the syllabus, several days into their winter break.

I’m among the many admirers of Orin’s influential scholarship on the law of future interests in Ohio and its complex relationship to spousal joint tenancies. Everyone wishes he would write more articles in that vein.

I'm honored to be interviewing Judge David Tatel '66 today at 12:15 @uchicagolaw.bsky.social in a wide-ranging conversation focused on his career and remarkable memoir, Vision. ACS and DRAC are sponsoring this conversation with one of the nation's wisest judges. www.amazon.com/Vision-Blind...

This piece provides a vital response to the “less privacy just means you’ll see better tailored ads” canard.

New paper alert! Excited that my new article "The Invention of Immigration Exceptionalism" has been published by @YaleLJournal. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I'm happy to welcome the University of Chicago Law School, @uchicagolaw.bsky.social, to Bluesky! To celebrate the arrival of our official account, here is a starter pack with my faculty colleagues. go.bsky.app/L81ZCoX