Justin (Gus) Hurwitz — gus@gushurwitz.net

About Gus

Drawing on my background in law, economics, and computer science, I 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, to help expand the law & engineering program. I was previously a full professor and founding director of the Governance and Technology Center at the University of Nebraska.

Some of 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. At Penn, I teach classes, and am working on a book, that equip engineering and other STEM students to engage productively in public policy discussions and, generally, to provide them a grounding in political philosophy, civics, and regulatory theory.

My research focuses on the regulation of technology, including administrative and regulatory law, antitrust law, torts and products liability, and media law - alongside cognate fields. I am currently working on an AI standardization initiative with Seoul National University, a UNICEF-organized study of broadband deployment to public schools in Rwanda, and a book on conglomerate and ecosystems theories of antitrust.

I have published over 30 articles and book chapters, two books (one on cybersecurity law & policy, one on media regulation in the digital era) and have two more in process, 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 (including the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Associated Press). This work has been cited by legislators, federal courts of appeals, and federal regulatory agencies.

I occasionally teach intro to networks and power systems classes for utilities regulators. Here are some demos I have made to illustrate principles: Electromagnetic Induction Simple Generator Generator Synchronization Simple Grid - Blackstart Frequency, Inertia, & Droop Less Simple Grid Also, I got bored over a long weekend so wrote Word Go, a web-based word game.



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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)
    In progress and forthcoming:
  • Data Portability: A Solution, Too Many Problems (forthcoming)
  • Falsifiable Regulation (in process) (with Manne)
  • Regulation as a Discovery Process: Against Waterfall Public Law (in process)
  • The Maturation Dilemma: Consumer Protection and the Product Lifecycle (in process)
  • The Integration Cycle: Innovation Lifecycles and the Analysis of Verticl Conduct under Section 2 (in process)
  • Antitrust's Seven Powers Problem: Section 2 and the Strategist's View of Competition (in process)
  • Precision's Price as a Civil-Rights Problem: Legal AI, Access, and Optimal Precision (in process)
    Books:
  • Engineering, Law, and the State (proposal in progess)
  • Conglomerates and Ecosystems in the Digital Era (under contract; Cambridge 2026, with Manne and Prince)
  • Media and Society after Technological Disruption (Cambridge 2024, with Langvardt)
  • Cybersecurity: An Interdisciplinary Problem (West 2021, with Bambauer, Thaw, & Tschider)
    Articles:
  • An Assessment of Standards in Technology Tort Litigation, Columbia Science & Technology Law Review (forthcoming 2026) (with Lu)
  • The Consumer Protection Paradox Emory Law Journal (forthcoming) (with Dickinson)
  • Build, Buy, or Both? Do the Antitrust Laws Prefer Internal Growth to Growth through Actuisitions?, Nevada Law Journal (2025) (with Manne)
  • The AI Standards Alignment Problem, Journal of Law & Innovation (2025)
  • The New Conservative Antitrust Is Not Here To Last, ProMarket (2025)
  • Lessons for Deference From the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, The Regulatory Review (2025).
  • The Legality of the FTC's Noncompete Ban Is Less Certain Than Masur and Posner Suggest, ProMarket (2024)
  • After Murthy v. Missouri, Diffuse Jawboning Remains Murky, The Regulatory Review (2024)
  • An Overview of Facial Recognition Technology Regulation in the United States (book chapter) (2024) (with Fidler)
  • A Bad Merger of Process and Substance: Changing the Merger Guidelines and Premerger Review Form, Network Law Review (2023)
  • Noisy Speech Externalities, Free Speech Law Review (2023)
  • Administrative Antitrust, Redux, George Mason Law Review (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