Author: Orly Lobel

Conference announcement – March 27 & 28, 2026 Harvard Law School – a rich program on the future of AI law and policy, coorganized by Iowa and Harvard Law, with future symposium publication in the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology. Register here. There will be a virtual live streaming option too. Hope to see some of you there!

Long time readers of Prawfs may remember we like novels about academia (my personal favorites remain Richard Russo’s Straight Man and John William’s Stoner. To that add campus HBO shows and limited series, like The Chair. Now there are two new releases – Rooster on HBO and Vladimir on Netflix both released this week, both dealing with same themes of cancellation culture, the academic power couple who ends up in a scandal with the husband faculty member having an affair with a student, the generational tensions within faculties. And both are about English professors, and the delicate, and for some – impossible – dance of writing while teaching.

I am excited about the new book, published today, by my colleague Lisa Ramsey Trademarks and Free Speech: Conflicts and Resolutions. I highly recommend anyone interested in content, political and commercial speech, competition and IP to check this thoughtful book out!

The book explores how trademark laws can conflict with the right to freedom of expression and proposes a framework for evaluating free speech challenges to trademark registration and enforcement laws. It also explains why granting trademark rights in informational terms, political messages, widely used phrases, decorative product features, and other language and designs with substantial pre-existing communicative value can harm free expression and fair competition. Ramsey encourages governments to not register or protect broad trademark rights in these types of inherently valuable expression. She also recommends that trademark statutes explicitly allow certain informational, expressive, and decorative fair uses of another’s trademark, and proposes other speech-protective and pro-competitive reforms of trademark law for consideration by legislatures, courts, and trademark offices in the United States, Europe, and other countries.

If you are in San Diego, USD is hosting a book event on February 23 at 6 pm, with Ninth Circuit Judge Margaret McKeown and a DLA Piper trademark attorney and others- https://www.sandiego.edu/events/law/detail.php?_focus=102225  

The Supreme Court’s recent interventions on abortion, opioids, gender-affirming care, and conversion therapy have me thinking there must be a better way to think and talk about our deepest disagreements over the practice of medicine. My colleague Dov Fox offers just that in his latest book with Harvard University Press, The Conscience of Care: Navigating Health in the Culture Wars.

It shows how only in America can medical professionals appeal to conscience as a one-sided trump card. I’m used to hearing about conscientious refusers, whose heartfelt convictions lead them to deny treatments that they deem sinful or wrong. Less familiar are clinicians whose moral commitment to evidence-based care compels them to do what their institution or state forbids—on pain of losing their job, their license, or their freedom. Dov details our law’s indifference to such conscientious providers. In stark contrast, refusers enjoy shocking levels of immunity from everything from employment violations and patient discrimination to civil malpractice and criminal endangerment. It doesn’t matter if they’re the last physician or even hospital in town. Refusers don’t even have to tell patients about their medical options.
The book argues that this lopsided law of medical conscience is unjust and indefensible. It charts a principled new path of conditions, consequences, and compromises to break through the conflicts that divide us most. I’m not the only one who thinks so: here are some blurbs: “Elegantly written and meticulously reasoned, this book … presents a bold, urgent vision for resolving the[] pressing controversies of our time.” —Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford; “A cutting-edge … model [of] respect across political disagreement.” —Reva Siegel, Yale Law School; “[G]roundbreaking…. Mandatory reading for anyone concerned about medical ethics and the evolving roles of government in healthcare.” —Anita L. Allen, UPenn Law School ; “Dov Fox’s pioneering work … could not be more timely.” —I. Glenn Cohen, Harvard Law School

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about trust, specifically about when and whether governments should trust their citizens to do the right thing. My longtime collaborator, Yuval Feldman’s brilliant new book, Can the Public Be Trusted? The Promise and Perils of Voluntary Compliance, which came out
just now from CUP in an open access format, tackles this question head-on, but what makes it so valuable is how it flips the usual regulatory inquiry on its head. Instead of asking how we can make people comply, Yuval asks whether we can trust them to comply on their own. This reversal opens up fascinating connections between regulation, trust, and compliance that cut across every domain we care about: tax collection, environmental protection, workplace safety, public health. For years, Yuval has been developing this research agenda, showing how behavioral science can help us understand when intrinsic motivation works better than fear of punishment. The instinct of most legal systems has been to assume the worst and design accordingly, but his work demonstrates that voluntary compliance can actually outperform heavy-handed enforcement in many contexts. It reduces costs, builds genuine cooperation, and creates lasting cultural change rather than resentful box-checking. The book maps out when these trust-based approaches succeed and when they fall short, giving regulators and policymakers a sophisticated framework for making smart choices.
Some of the book builds on work Yuval and I have done together over the years on organizational enforcement and whistleblowing. Those projects explored how internal governance structures can cultivate compliance from within rather than relying solely on external oversight. Now this new work takes that insight to the next level by examining how technology might enhance voluntary compliance rather than simply adding another layer of surveillance. Can algorithmic monitoring and AI oversight support trust-based regulation, or do they inevitably undermine the autonomy and dignity that fuel intrinsic motivation? Which is very much in line with more own work on the intersection between technology and law. Indeed our current joint research (with Ori Aronson) explores how predictive analytics might enable regulators to identify which individuals and entities can be safely trusted with lighter oversight, reserving intensive monitoring for genuine risks. This matters because in an era of declining faith in institutions and growing polarization, understanding how to cultivate genuine cooperation from citizens is essential to addressing every major challenge we face. Yuval’s book lays the conceptual groundwork for this next generation of regulatory design, one that moves beyond the false choice between blind trust and constant suspicion and suggest numerous innovative insights for any scholar with interest in the ability of law to change behaviour in an effective and just way.