Justin (Gus) Hurwitz — gus@gushurwitz.net

About Gus

My work draws on my background in law, economics, and computer science to study how technology orders economic and social institutions. In summer 2023 I joined the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School as a Senior Fellow and Academic Director of the Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition, where I am helping to expand the law & engineering program. I was previously a full professor at the University of Nebraska, where I was the founding director of the Governance & Technology Center.

The most interesting work today is at the intersection of engineering, business, and law. My passion is introducing students to foundational concepts needed to work across these disciplines. I convolve engineering with regulatory law and economics. If that statement makes you giddy, then you are my people.

As an academic I work to break down disciplinary barriers and to create opportunities for those who are similarly interested in refactoring our research institutions to better support the needs of the future.

I have published over 30 articles and book chapters, a book on cybersecurity law & policy, over 100 shorter writings (op-eds, shorter analyses, blog posts, &c), hosted over 100 podcast episodes, and regularly appear or am quoted in popular media. This work has been cited by legislators, federal courts of appeals, and federal regulatory agencies. More recently I am working to produce short- and mid-form video content to introduce broader audiences to ideas from law, regulation, and engineering.

Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 3
Image 4
Image 4
Image 4
Image 4

My thanks and compliments to the wonderful team at Pixel Bakery who worked on many of these projects. Music by 2TECH-AUDIO.

Experience
  • 2023-Current: Senior Fellow and Academic Director, Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
  • 2018-Current: Director of Law & Economics Programs, International Center for Law & Economics
  • 2013-2023: Professor of Law, University of Nebraska (with tenure, 2018; full professor, 2021)
  • 2019-2023: Founding Director of the Governance & Technology Center at the University of Nebraska
  • 2011-2013: Post-Doc, Center for Technology, Innovation, & Competition at U. Pennsylvania
  • 2007-2010: Trial Attorney, United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division
  • 2002-2004: Graduate & Undergraduate Researcher, Los Alamos National Lab
Education
  • JD, University of Chicago, 2007
  • MA (Economics), George Mason University, 2010
  • BA (Liberal Arts), St. John's College, 2003
Complete Curriculum Vitae
Summary: I like building stuff and knowing how to build stuff. I study how law and regulation help and hinder the building of beneficial stuff.

Research
  • I use New Institutional and Transaction Cost Economics to study regulation in high-tech industries.
  • I was once a computer scientist, studying high-performance networking and low-level network protocols.
Legal Expertise
  • Most of my work is in antitrust, administrative, regulatory, and telecommunications law and policy.
  • I have a particular focus on communications law and technology, including wireline and wireless communications, the Internet, and platform economics.
I am:
  • an amateur woodworker and welder;
  • dangerous with computers (I program, without remorse, in C, and write my own CSS. poorly);
  • a moderately competent videographer and video editor;
  • a rock climber and I dance Argentine tango.
Select Scholarly Publications (Full list available in my curriculum vitae)
  • Media and Society after Technological Disruption (Cambridge 2024, with Langvardt)
  • Cybersecurity: An Interdisciplinary Problem (West 2021, with Bambauer, Thaw, & Tschider)
  • A Bad Merger of Process and Substance: Changing the Merger Guidelines and Premerger Review Form (2023)
  • Noisy Speech Externalities (2023)
  • Administrative Antitrust, Redux (2023)
  • What is a Law & Political Economy Movement without Economics or Political Economy? (2022)
  • Digital Duty to Deal, Data Portability, and Interoperability (2020)
  • Designing a Pattern, Darkly (2020)
  • Regulation as Partnership (2020)
  • Madison and Shannon on Social Media (2020)
  • AmEx and Post-Cartesian Antitrust (2019)
  • Chevron's Political Domain: W(h)ither Step Three? (2019)
  • Telemarketing, Technology, and the Regulation of Private Speech (2019)
  • Big Tech's Big-Time, Big-Scale Problem (2018, with Geoff Manne)
  • Classical Liberalism and the Problem of Technological Change (2018, with Geoff Manne)
  • Telecommunications Competition Law vs Policy in the United States (2018)
  • Cyberensuring Security (2017)
  • EncryptionCongress mod (Apple + CALEA) (2017)
  • Data Security and the FTC's UnCommon Law (2016)
  • Chevron and the Limits of Administrative Antitrust (2014)
  • Administrative Antitrust (2013)
  • Analysing MPI Performance over 10-gigabit Ethernet (2005)
  • End-to-End Performance of 10-Gigabit Ethernet on Commodity Systems (2004)
  • Initial End-to-End Performance Evaluation of 10-Gigabit Ethernet (2003)
Summary: My greatest teaching passion is introducing students to foundational concepts, especially across disciplinary boundaries. The most important work in society today is being done at the intersection of law, business, and technology. My teaching interests start where these fields intersect.

I increasingly develop new teaching materials as videos and other non-traditional formats that can reach wider and more diverse audiences than is possible with traditional texts and classroom settings.

Traditional Law Courses:
  • Administrative Law, Antitrust, Cyberlaw and Cybersecurity Law and Policy, Law and Economics, Principles of Regulation, Regulated Industries (including Telecommunications Law), Torts
Interdisciplinary Courses:
  • Technology and the State
  • Technology Regulation: Interdisclinary Concepts
  • Introduction to the Law
  • Many of my traditional law courses can be taught in a manner suitable for business, computer science, or engineering students