Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig Named Special Master of Justice Department/Microsoft Dispute
December 12, 1997 -- U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has named Harvard Law School Professor of Law Lawrence Lessig Special Master of the antitrust dispute between the U.S. Department of Justice and Microsoft Corporation.
A specialist in the law of cyberspace, Constitutional law, antitrust, and contracts, Lessig has been Professor of Law at Harvard since July 1997. He taught the Contracts course during the fall semester, and will teach the High-Tech Entrepreneur seminar during the January winter term, and the Constitutional law seminar Fidelity and the Civil War Amendments during the spring semester.
"I am honored to be asked, and am eager to begin work," said Lessig. "Judge Jackson stressed the urgency in resolving this case, and I intend to do everything I can to consider the matter as fairly and expeditiously as possible."
Due to the judicial nature of the appointment, Professor Lessig will be unavailable for further comment.
Harvard Law School Dean Robert Clark calls Lessig "an ideal person for the position of special master. He is a leading scholar of Constitutional law and the developing field of the law of cyberspace."
Lessig received a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1989, a M.A. in Philosophy from Trinity College (Cambridge University) in 1986, and a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Management from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983.
Lessig's projects include a book on the law of cyberspace (viewing the law of cyberspace as a type of comparative constitutional law and exploring the significance of problems that the regulation of cyberspace might present), an empirical study of judicial efficiency and reputation in the federal courts, and the development of an electronic casebook builder in the area of contracts.
Among his recent publications are "The Erie-Effects of Volume 110: An Essay on Context in Interpretive Theory," 110 Harvard Law Review 1785 (1997); and "Reading the Constitution in Cyberspace," 45 Emory Law Review 869 (1996) (which U.S. Supreme Court Justice O'Connor cited repeatedly in her concurrence in the Communication Decency Act decision, Reno v. ACLU).
Lessig came to Harvard in summer 1997 from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was Professor of Law since 1995 and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Constitutionalism in Eastern Europe.
Professor, Harvard Law School
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