Innovation Policy Colloquium
Professors Michal Shur-Ofry and Katherine Strandburg
Spring 2026
Thursdays 4:45-6:45pm Vanderbilt Hall, Room 208
LW.10930
3 credits
The Innovation Policy Colloquium focuses each year on different aspects of the law’s role in promoting creativity, invention, and new technology. This year, we will discuss the the implications of complexity for law and policy related to innovation, privacy and AI. Complexity science is a cutting-edge multi-disciplinary field that studies a wide variety of systems comprised of numerous interacting components. The human social network, the internet, social media applications, cities, biological systems and financial networks are all examples of complex systems. Complexity can lead to non-linear and surprising responses to policy initiatives, such as tipping points and feedback effects. Policymaking that is insensitive to these possibilities can go drastically awry.
Schedule of Presenters
Thursday, FEBRUARY 5
Albert-László Barabási, Director, CCNR/The Lab: The Center for Complex Network Research
Network Science as a Falsifiable Discipline: From Graphs to Testable Laws
Thursday, FEBRUARY 12
Mark McKenna, Vice Dean of Faculty & Intellectual Life; Professor of Law; Faculty Co-Director, UCLA Institute for Technology, Law & Policy, UCLA School of Law
Woodrow Hartzog, Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law
Taking Scale Seriously in Technology Law
Abstract: Issues of scale—the relationship between the amount of an activity and its associated costs and benefits—permeate discussions around law and technologies. Indeed, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that scale is the reason for most technology regulation. But it’s not always clear how lawmakers and judges conceptualize “scale” when approaching questions around automated technologies. Scale is often used intuitively, just to mean “more.” But scale is not always just about more—scale can introduce new harms and benefits along different dimensions, not simply costs or efficiencies of greater magnitude. In this Article, we argue for a more sustained interrogation of the role of scale in law, one that is more sensitive to the distinction between what we describe as “scale is more” and “scale is different.” When lawmakers and judges fail to properly categorize the role of scale in a particular context, they risk ignoring or misidentifying harms, misdiagnosing the causes of those harms, and potentially focusing on the wrong policy tools, and even the wrong actors, in proposing solutions.
Thursday, FEBRUARY 19
Andrew Torrance, Associate Dean of Graduate and International Law; Paul E. Wilson Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Kansas School of Law
Thursday, FEBRUARY 26
Michal Shur-Ofry, Adjunct Professor of Law, NYU School of Law Spring 2026; Associate Professor, The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Thursday, MARCH 5
Michal Gal, Professor and Director of the Center for Law and Technology, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa
Dr. Raz Agranat, Assistant Professor of Law, Radzyner Law School, Reichman University
Thursday, MARCH 12
Feng Fu, Associate Professor, Dartmouth College
Questions about the Colloquium should be addressed to Nicole Arzt. For those interested in attending any of the talks without an NYU ID need to RSVP to Nicole Arzt.