Law Commons^™

The Promise And Perils Of Tech Whistleblowing, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Northwestern University Law Review

Whistleblowers and leakers wield significant influence in technology law and policy. On topics ranging from cybersecurity to free speech, tech whistleblowers spur congressional hearings, motivate the introduction of legislation, and animate critical press coverage of tech firms. But while scholars and policymakers have long called for transparency and accountability in the tech sector, they have overlooked the significance of individual disclosures by industry insiders—workers, employees, and volunteers—who leak information that firms would prefer to keep private.

This Article offers an account of the rise and influence of tech whistleblowing. Radical information asymmetries pervade tech law and policy. Firms exercise near-complete …

Health Care Fraud And The Erosion Of Trust, Katrice Bridges Copeland

Northwestern University Law Review

In health care, trust is a foundational concept. Patients must trust that their medical practitioners are competent to treat them. The trustworthiness of medical practitioners encourages patients to disclose intimate facts about their medical issues. Further, patients must trust health care providers to demonstrate impartial concern for the patients’ well-being, also known as fidelity. In providing care, the needs of the patients, rather than financial incentives, must drive medical practitioners. Without this trust, patients may not cooperate with diagnosis and treatment. In addition to trusting providers, care outcomes are better if patients trust the health care system as a whole. …

Fraud In A Land Of Plenty, Jonathan R. Macey

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay discusses the regulation of fraud in a developed economy and offers some explanations for why fraud appears to be on the increase. Ironically, regulation designed to combat fraud can actually increase fraud by attracting economic activity to fraud-ridden industries. In other words, regulation can create problems of its own by fostering the false perception that fraud is being addressed even when it is not. This analysis is relevant in the context of the current surge in sentiment to regulate cryptocurrencies in the wake of the FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried debacle. Such regulation threatens to attract more resources to …

Agency Rulemaking And Political Transitions, Anne Joseph O'Connell

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Regulating Cyber-Security, Nathan Alexander Sales

Northwestern University Law Review

The conventional wisdom is that this country’s privately owned critical infrastructure—banks, telecommunications networks, the power grid, and so on—is vulnerable to catastrophic cyber-attacks. The existing academic literature does not adequately grapple with this problem, however, because it conceives of cyber-security in unduly narrow terms: most scholars understand cyber-attacks as a problem of either the criminal law or the law of armed conflict. Cyber-security scholarship need not run in such established channels. This Article argues that, rather than thinking of private companies merely as potential victims of cyber-crimes or as possible targets in cyber-conflicts, we should think of them in administrative …