Disclaimer.
If your house were on fire, would you search the internet to figure out how to put out the flames? Of course not! Same with legal advice. The views I express on this site are mine alone. Nothing on this site is intended as, or constitutes, legal advice. If you have a legal problem, please consult an attorney.
About the site.
The Digital Garbage Net is a blog about the intersection of information and law, technology, and culture, published by Ira Steven Nathenson. It’s also about legal education. Sometimes it’s about other stuff, too.
About me.
I’m a law professor at St. Thomas University School of Law in sunny south Florida. I got my B.A. in Philosophy and English from the University of Pittsburgh, and my J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where I was Editor-in-Chief of the University of Pittsburgh Law Review. Subsequent to graduation, I served as a law clerk to the Hon. D. Michael Fisher and Hon. Joseph F. Weis of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and practiced in the Intellectual Property and Copyright and Trademark practice groups at Kirkpatrick & Lockhart LLP (now K&L Gates LLP). Prior to joining the faculty of St. Thomas University School of Law, I taught at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law. Outside the ivy-covered (or in South Florida, stucco-covered) walls of academia, I publish this blog, digital garbage, post to Twitter, and enjoy photography.
Research.
My scholarship explores the role that technology plays in the creation, dissemination, and retrieval of information. I’m also increasingly interested in the role that procedure plays in online IP enforcement, and the dangers of feedback loops that lead to procedural injustice in the context of private enforcement. I also write about reforms to legal education and how technology might be used to create holistic and immersive environments for online law teaching simulations. I’m currently researching theoretical issues regarding cyberspace, including human rights and the structure of cyberspace. My writings have been published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, University of Pittsburgh Law Review, University of Louisville Law Review, Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal, Ohio Northern University Law Review, and Akron Intellectual Property Journal. My articles and other materials can also be found at SSRN or Bepress.
Teaching.
I teach courses in Cyberlaw, Intellectual Property, and Civil Procedure. In 2009, I was honored to be selected as 1L Professor of the Year by the students and SBA at St. Thomas. My upper-level Cyberlaw course is taught as a live role-playing simulation that uses live, continually changing websites for role-playing exercises in which students act as “counsel” to a fictitious client. You can find archives of previous Cyberlaw simulation websites here. My current research project focuses on the merits of skills simulations as a way of teaching Cyberlaw. An abstract of Best Practices for the Law of the Horse: Teaching Cyberlaw through Simulations can be found here.
Contact information:
Ira S. Nathenson
Associate Professor of Law
St. Thomas Univ. School of Law
16401 NW 37th Avenue
Miami Gardens, FL 33054
phone: 305-474-2454
email: inathenson at stu dot edu
Last update: last day of 2012 (the year the world didn’t end)