Ohio Northern University presents the 39th annual Law Review Symposium, “Turning Point: An Interdisciplinary Discussion of the Intersection of Privacy and Emerging Technologies,” in the Pettit College of Law’s Celebrezze Moot Court Room on Friday, Oct. 16.
During the symposium, a panel of legal experts will discuss the constantly changing world of technology, how it has evolved in the 21st century and its impact on the legal system. The event is sponsored by the Ohio Northern University Law Review and Carhart Program in Legal Ethics.
Registration begins at 8 a.m. This symposium is open to the public. The cost for the event is $85 for individual attorneys, $75 for federal/state/local government attorneys, $65 for ONU College of Law alumni, $45 for ONU College of Law alumni who are Lehr Society members, $35 for non-attorney registrants, and $25 for non-ONU students.
Professor Tom W. Bell will open the event by discussing “Copyrights and Privacy: How Bitcoin Signatures Can Protect Both.” Bell earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1993. He thereafter practiced law in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., and served as a policy director at the Cato Institute before joining the faculty of Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law. Bell has published papers on copyrights, Internet law, polycentric law, consent theory, prediction markets and the Third Amendment as well as the book “Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good.” He teaches all of the first-year common law courses and many electives relating to high-tech and IP law. Bell’s clients include law schools that hire him for statistical analysis of the U.S. News & World Report rankings and companies working in the special economic zones industry, which he advises on legal system design.
Judith Wagner DeCew, professor of philosophy at Clark University, will take on the issue of “Privacy and Its Importance with Advancing Technology.” DeCew has served as associate dean of the college for several years and chair of the philosophy department for more than 10 years. She served on the faculty in philosophy at MIT for eight years and has been a visiting professor of philosophy at Wellesley College and at Harvard University Summer School. DeCew’s research and teaching focus on topics in theoretical and applied ethics, philosophy of law, social and political philosophy, and privacy. She was secretary-treasurer of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy for six years and was elected to the national American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Philosophy and Law for two three-year terms. She has been a research fellow at Harvard Law School, The Bunting Institute at Radcliffe and Harvard University and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for Humanities, the American Council for Learned Societies and the American Association of University Women. In 2010, she won Clark’s Senior Faculty Fellowship, which is “presented to an outstanding senior faculty member who personifies the Clark ideal of excellence in teaching and excellence in scholarship.” DeCew is the author of three books, including “In Pursuit of Privacy: Law, Ethics, and the Rise of Technology” and “Unionization in the Academy: Visions and Realities.” She also has published more than 40 articles.
David C. Vladeck, a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, will speak on “Consumer Protection in an Era of Algorithmic Decision-Making.” At Georgetown, Vladeck teaches federal courts, civil procedure, administrative law and a seminar on First Amendment litigation. Vladeck recently returned to the law school after serving nearly four years as the director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. At the FTC, he supervised the Bureau’s more than 430 lawyers, investigators, paralegals and support staff in carrying out the Bureau’s work to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive or fraudulent practices. Before joining the law school faculty full time in 2002, Vladeck spent more than 25 years with Public Citizen Litigation Group, a nationally prominent public interest law firm, handling and supervising a complex litigation. He has briefed and argued a number of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and more than 60 cases before federal courts of appeal and state courts of last resort. He is a senior fellow of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an elected member of the American Law Institute, and an appointed member of the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Science, Technology and Law. He also serves on the boards of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Consumers Law Center.
ONU professor Deidré Keller closes out the symposium with a discussion on “Copyright and Privacy.” Keller joined the Pettit College of Law faculty in August 2010 as an assistant professor. She has taught property, law and literature, Internet law, legal problem-solving and analysis, and intellectual property. Her teaching interests also include First Amendment (freedom of speech), copyright and trademark. During the summers of 2011, 2012 and 2013, Keller taught an intellectual property survey course for the LSAC DiscoverLaw.org PLUS program at ONU. The PLUS program is directed at undergraduates from groups underrepresented in the legal profession and who face significant financial and familial obstacles in their pursuit of a career in law. Prior to joining the ONU faculty, Keller practiced law in Atlanta, Ga., with the firms of Sutherland, Asbill and Brennan LLP and Seyfarth Shaw LLP. She specialized in the procurement, registration and enforcement of intellectual property rights with a particular emphasis on trademarks and copyrights. Keller’s experience includes trademark portfolio management, counseling clients on matters such as the adoption of trademarks, potential defenses to copyright infringement, and issues related to litigating patent disputes. She has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in patent, trademark and copyright matters, and her clients have ranged from individuals to publically traded companies.
