University of California Hastings College of the Law
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Defending Children’s Data Privacy: Strategies for the 21st Century
No full textChildren’s use of social media has been linked to an overwhelming number of adverse effects on their mental health, privacy, and well-being. There is a general consensus among parents, researchers, and lawmakers that children’s online protections must be expanded. However, recent legislative efforts to effect change have been met with consistent failure. Recently, California, Arkansas, and Texas passed new legislation intended to bolster existing protections and expand child privacy online. The Arkansas law and portions of the California and Texas laws do not pass constitutional muster under current case law, and all three federal district courts articulated their inability to permit these proposed protections within First Amendment precedential confines.
The present framework is outdated, unsuitable, and overly narrow for application to today’s online context. Assumptions about the internet at the time this case law was developed are counterfactual in 2025. A reconsideration of existing Supreme Court First Amendment precedent to sanction greater regulation of child safety online is critical to setting up an expansive framework in which child protections can be prioritized. Pending the Supreme Court’s revision of First Amendment precedent, lawmakers are not without options. Legislators can initiate solutions that are permissible under the existing framework, including cell phone bans in schools, restrictions on access to obscene materials, increased regulations on data collection and sales or the use of dark patterns, and funding programs that educate parents and children about safe online practices. Though assembling a patchwork of narrow regulations this way may be effective, the Supreme Court needs to update its First Amendment framework to make space for policymakers to broadly expand privacy laws and create a robust defense against technology related harms to minors
In Search of the Best Policies for Translational Geroscience
No full textThough it once seemed like an inevitable fact of life, geroscience can now credibly promise to slow and even reverse aging. New geroscience treatments offer the prospect of large increases in human welfare and will attract huge demand. How can governments best support research, development, and commercialization of the field? The answer will depend on many factors, including public policies, supply-side resources, and market size. This paper focuses on the first factor, seeking the best public policies for translating geroscience from bench to bedside. It begins with a review of current geroscience policy, identifying the rules and institutions that help or hinder innovation in anti-aging healthcare. The paper then combines facts with theory to suggest ways to improve geroscience policy. It starts with a model policy that reverses the usual precautionary prohibition on unapproved medical treatments and instead opens access to them, subject to a variety of conditions including risk disclosures, strict liability for defective manufacture, design, or documentation, and other common law protections. Something close to that model policy recently became law in two jurisdictions. Most jurisdictions remain far from that ideal, however, so the paper also describes seven pragmatic near-term reforms to promote anti-aging medicines. If limited to fixing one immediate problem, reformers should convince regulators to accept biomarkers as standards for evaluating anti-aging treatments. The paper concludes by describing a near possible future where geroscience can fulfill its potential to cure human aging safely and effectively
Generative Privacy Doctrine: The Case For A New Legal Privacy Framework For Gen^Ai
No full textFrom quills to queries, from secrets once scrawled in private to personal prompts on glowing screens, debates over privacy rights endure. Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) further confounds by conflating confession with code, and intimate thoughts with algorithms. Although technologists have predicted AI’s ascent before, and have critically assessed privacy rights for decades, the unprecedented engagement with GenAI following OpenAI’s public launch of ChatGPT marks a distinct moment— one where a generation of rights holders actively builds and converses with emerging platforms while the law strains to keep pace.
Existing privacy doctrines are ill-prepared for GenAI’s dynamic data processing and its power to extract insights from seemingly benign interactions. Appellate decisions like United States v. Warshak (6th Cir.)(recognizing email’s heightened privacy expectations), and hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corp. (9th Cir.)(questioning limits on data scraping), along with Supreme Court precedent such as Carpenter v. United States (applying mosaic theory to reveal “deeply revealing” data), signal evolving protections in the digital realm. Yet these precedents do not fully anticipate GenAI’s capacity to co-create novel personal information.
This article argues we have reached a critical juncture requiring a refreshed legal framework. It introduces the term “Gen^AI” to highlight this unique convergence: a technological leap (GenAI) and the generation navigating its constitutional and privacy implications (the AI Generation). In response, it offers the Generative Privacy Doctrine (“GPD”)—a flexible legal framework that recalibrates privacy rights in real time. GPD tackles inferential data creation, mandates iterative user consent, and imposes carefully tailored third-party restrictions that deter exploitative or discriminatory use. Aligning with global data-protection norms (e.g., the GDPR) and clarifying domestic principles (including the “third-party doctrine” and contractual consent), GPD offers a way to protect individual dignity without stifling AI innovation
