University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

10/30/2026

In a guest column for The Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn Carey Law Professor Kate Shaw and Wharton Professor Eric Orts make the case that voting is not only a right but a duty, and that these midterm elections are critical to the health of our democracy.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 3. In Pennsylvania, polls are open 7 a.m.–8 p.m. Make a plan, bring a friend, and vote.

Read the full column: https://www.thedp.com/article/2026/10/penn-guest-column-democracy-depends-voting-midterms

10/28/2026

As a litigation intern at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund last summer, Ali Smith L’27 drafted filings to protect students’ equal educational opportunities, tracked qualified immunity decisions, and joined LDF’s Qualified Immunity Working Group in his first week.

Ali, a first-generation law student and dual-degree student also pursuing an MSSP at Penn’s School of Social Policy and Practice, says courses like Constitutional Litigation and Regulating Police, the Legislative Clinic, and support from the Black Law Students Association prepared him to hit the ground running. This fall, he brings that experience to the Advocacy for Racial and Civil (ARC) Justice Clinic.

Read more in our Pathways to the Profession series: https://penncareylaw.news/4yMAmSW

10/22/2026

Where law meets social policy.

Zack Demars L’26, MS’26 shares how the JD/MSSP dual degree, offered jointly with Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice, has shaped his path toward a career in systemic advocacy and connected him with the broader Penn community.

10/20/2026

What can China’s working class tell us about the global economy?

In his new book, The Unmaking of the Chinese Working Class: How Communism Built a Capitalist Superpower, Professor Teemu Ruskola examines how China’s transformation of land and labor remade both the country and the world economy, and why, as he puts it, “China is not the enemy.”

Learn more at the link in bio.

10/15/2026

Since 2024, the Penn Carey Law AI Project has worked with 20+ judicial chambers to test how generative AI can support judicial work.

Led by Professor Polk Wagner and a team of student researchers, the project gives judges and their clerks a secure place to try AI tools, share use cases, and get training and feedback.

What they’ve found: “The tools save real time when the work stays close to the record, like summarizing briefs or drafting a procedural history,” said Wagner. However, Wagner added they’re still unreliable at finding the law on their own. “Most importantly, the judges we work with know that, and they know it because they’ve watched it happen.”

Read more: https://penncareylaw.news/4s2eZLk

10/14/2026

This summer, Advik Passi L’28 took a step toward a career at the intersection of law and technology with an internship at SpaceX, where he worked on licensing for the company’s satellite broadband system.

At SpaceX, Advik drew on what he learned in Penn Carey Law’s Internet Law course to draft narratives on the public-interest benefits of new satellites and to craft arguments asking the FCC to allow broadband in certain frequency bands for the first time ever.

“Now, I return to Penn Carey Law with a completely different way of approaching problems, expert knowledge about internet access, sharper writing skills, and too many space puns,” he wrote.

Read more about Advik’s pathway to the profession: https://penncareylaw.news/4hW05lk

10/08/2026

How should human rights law handle problems that involve both discrimination and violations of substantive rights?

In an article in the Human Rights Law Review, Professor Jean Galbraith teamed up with Elizabeth Flatley LLM’25 to compare three approaches: a disaggregated approach that treats the two separately, a specified approach that sets out ahead of time what rights violations look like for particular groups, and a holistic approach that draws out the connections between them.

Read more: https://penncareylaw.news/4y2IPRn

Professor Jean Galbraith and Elizabeth Flatley LLM'25 compare three approaches that human rights law takes when discrimination and violations of substan...

10/05/2026

Research from Penn Carey Law faculty is shaping how AI is taught, studied, and governed.

Through the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition (CTIC) and the Penn Program on Regulation (PPR), Penn Carey Law brings together scholars, policymakers, judges, and industry leaders to work through the legal and regulatory questions AI is raising now.

Explore the scholarship behind Technology, Regulation, AI, and the Law (TRAIL): https://penncareylaw.news/4hvCPM9

10/02/2026

Thirteen new and returning courses. A new joint certificate in AI and Law with Penn Engineering. This fall, Penn Carey Law's curriculum is growing under our new key initiative, Technology, Regulation, AI, and the Law (TRAIL).

“We’re doing the hard interdisciplinary work of figuring out how existing law applies to a technology that's moving faster than anything we've seen,” said Polk Wagner, Michael A. Fitts Professor and Deputy Dean for Academic Affairs.

In our labs and hands-on courses, students are designing, building, and testing technology-enabled solutions to real problems—from expanding access to justice to shaping how deals get done.

Read more about our curriculum: https://penncareylaw.news/4zejepP

10/01/2026

A new Graduate Certificate of Study in AI and Law, offered in partnership with Penn Engineering, is open to Penn Carey Law students starting this semester. Students complete five AI and law courses and attend four AI-related events.

“This Certificate reflects the interdisciplinary foundation of our approach to legal education, bringing together insights from law and engineering to equip students with the tools and perspective needed to engage thoughtfully with emerging technologies,” said Dean Sophia Z. Lee.

It’s the first step in a broader partnership between the Law School and Penn Engineering, with reciprocal certificates and joint degree programs—all under the umbrella of Technology, Regulation, AI, and the Law (TRAIL), Penn Carey Law’s new initiative to advance the next era of law and technology.

Read more: https://penncareylaw.news/46UZmMg