Julie E. Cohen
Mark Claster Mamolen Professor of Law and Technology
Julie E. Cohen is the Mark Claster Mamolen Professor of Law and Technology at Georgetown University Law Center, where she is a faculty co-director of the Institute for Technology Law and Policy and the Center on Privacy and Technology. She is one of the nation's leading scholars on privacy, intellectual property, and information platforms, and the author of Between Truth and Power and Configuring the Networked Self. Her work examines how networked information technologies are reshaping legal institutions and power structures. Before joining Georgetown in 1999, she was on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
Teaching Style
Professor Cohen takes a theoretically rigorous approach to information law, using the Socratic method to challenge students to think critically about how networked technologies reshape legal institutions and power structures. She cold-calls regularly and expects students to engage with both doctrinal rules and the broader political economy of information. Her classes are intellectually demanding, requiring students to connect technical concepts about data and surveillance to legal and social theory.
Cold Call Tips
- 1Read the assigned materials closely, paying attention to how she frames the relationship between technology, law, and power
- 2Be prepared to discuss the policy implications of privacy and surveillance doctrines, not just the black-letter law
- 3Understand the basic framework of copyright law and fair use before tackling her more theoretical arguments
- 4Think critically about how platform business models create legal challenges that existing doctrine may not address
Areas of Expertise
Education
- J.D., Harvard Law School
- B.A., Harvard University
Notable Publications
- Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism (Oxford University Press)
- Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code, and the Play of Everyday Practice (Yale University Press)
- Copyright in a Global Information Economy (casebook, co-authored)
Research Interests
More Professors at Georgetown University Law Center
Constitutional Law, Contracts, Legal Theory
Constitutional Law, Criminal Justice, First Amendment, National Security Law
Constitutional Law, International Law, National Security Law, Criminal Law and Procedure
Torts, Products Liability, Constitutional Torts, Legal Ethics
Business Law, Commercial Law, Economic Justice, Race and the Law
Professional Responsibility, Corporations, Legal Ethics, American Legal Profession