YAN FANG
I research and write about law, technology, and society. My scholarship focuses on how legal actors and institutions adjust to changes in their informational environments and the impact of those changes on enforcement systems. Drawing on interviews and other qualitative research methods, I theorize the organizational processes that shape legal actors’ access to and use of information across several areas of law, including privacy law, evidence, and disabilities law.
I am an Assistant Professor at Boston College Law School and a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, I was an attorney for the Federal Trade Commission litigating violations of privacy and consumer protection law. I have a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and an A.B. from Harvard College. I also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Deborah L. Cook of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the Honorable Nancy F. Atlas of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
RESEARCH
My dissertation examines how internet technology companies shape the work of law enforcement officials responsible for gathering evidence. My future projects build on this research by studying how legal institutions develop and lose the capacity to find, evaluate, and oversee evidence in a changing information environment.
I am also part of an interdisciplinary research team studying federal courts’ disposition of disability discrimination cases. In that project, I focus on comparing how judges evaluate evidence produced by organizations versus individuals.
If you’re interested in learning more, please reach out to me at yan.fang@bc.edu, or via Twitter and LinkedIn. I'd value the chance to hear from you.
PUBLICATIONS
Internet Technology Companies as Evidence Intermediaries, 110 Va. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2024)
Creative Confluence: Lauren Edelman’s Collaborations, 57 Law & Soc’y Rev. 397 (2023) (with Rachel Best, Catherine Fisk, Linda Krieger, Diana Reddy, and Todd Neece)
Conversations in Law and Society: Oral Histories of the Emergence and Transformation of the Movement, 16 Annu. Rev. L. Soc. Sci. 97 (2020) (with Calvin Morrill, Lauren Edelman, and Rosann Greenspan)
FTC Privacy and Data Security Enforcement and Guidance Under Section 5, 25:2 Competition 89 (2016) (with Alexander Reicher)
The Death of the Privacy Policy? Effective Disclosures after In re Sears, Note, 25 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 671 (2010)
WORKS IN PROGRESS
Convergent and Divergent Enforcement (article based on dissertation research)
Frontline Enforcement in the Information Age (review essay for Law & Social Inquiry)
Disputed and Discredited: Pain, Mental Illness, and Invisible Impairments in Disability Lawsuits (with Rachel Best, Catherine Fisk, Linda Krieger, and Diana Reddy)
The Erosion of Federal Disability Discrimination Protections in Employment, 1979-2019 (with Linda Krieger, Rachel Best, Catherine Fisk, and Diana Reddy)
CONTACT
Email: yan.fang@bc.edu
Twitter: @yan_fang_
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/yanfang