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 the aims and operations of adjudicative systems. 

Using qualitative methods, I theorize the legal and organizational processes that shape legal actors’ access to and use of evidence across several bodies of law, including privacy law, evidence, civil procedure, and disabilities law. I also draw on my empirical work to identify organizational interventions that will further values fundamental to the rule of law, such as truth, privacy, and equality.

I am currently a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, I worked as an attorney for the Federal Trade Commission. I have a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and an A.B. from Harvard College. After law school, I clerked for 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. 

This fall, I will join Boston College Law School as an Assistant Professor.

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 developing proposals to strengthen the capacity of legal institutions to find, evaluate, and oversee evidence in a changing information environment. 

I am also part of an ongoing research collaboration focused on federal courts’ disposition of disability discrimination litigation, where my work will examine how judges evaluate evidence produced by organizations.

PUBLICATIONS

Internet Technology Companies as Evidence Intermediaries, 110 Va. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2024)

Creative Confluence: Lauren Edelman’s Collaborations, 57 Law & Socy 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

Frontline Enforcement in the Information Age (review essay for Law & Soc. Inquiry)

Disputed and Discredited: Pain, Mental Illness, and Invisible Impairments in Disability Lawsuits (with Rachel Best, Catherine Fisk, Linda Krieger, and Diana Reddy)

CV

Available here.

CONTACT

Email:  yfang@berkeley.edu

Twitter:  @yan_fang_

LinkedIn:  www.linkedin.com/in/yanfang