Peter M. Shane

Peter M. Shane is the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, where he regularly teaches administrative law, law and the presidency, and courses at the intersection of law, democracy, and new media. Named a Distinguished University Scholar in 2011, he is the author of over fifty law review articles and book chapters, as well as author, co-author or editor of eight books, including leading casebooks in both administrative law and separation of powers law. In 2016, the University of Chicago Press brought out in paperback his 2009 book, Madison’s Nightmare: How Executive Power Threatens American Democracy. In 2008-09, Peter served as executive director to the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, and was the lead drafter of its report, Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age (2009). His most recent books include Cybersecurity: Shared Risks, Shared Responsibilities (with Jeffrey Hunker, Carolina Academic Press, 2013), and Connecting Democracy: Online Consultation and the Future of Democratic Discourse (with Stephen Coleman, MIT Press, 2012). An earlier volume on transparency and national security is A Little Knowledge: Privacy, Security and Public Information After September 11 (with John Podesta and Richard C. Leone, Century Foundation Press, 2004). A frequent contributor to Huffington Post, Peter has written op-eds on public law issues for numerous outlets across the country including the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Washington Monthly, and Bloomberg BNA. His research and outreach projects on public deliberation, media and democracy have been funded by the National Science Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Knight Foundation and the Battelle Endowment for Technology and Human Affairs. He chairs the Board of Editors for I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, which he co-founded in 2004. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, Professor Shane clerked in 1977-78 for the Hon. Alvin B. Rubin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He served as an attorney-adviser in the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel and as an assistant general counsel in the Office of Management and Budget, before entering full-time teaching in 1981 at the University of Iowa. Professor Shane was dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law from 1994-1998. As Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management (now, Heinz College) from 2000-2003, he directed the Institute for the Study of Information Technology and Society (InSITeS). From 2003-2007, he headed the Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies at Ohio State. Professor Shane’s public service activities include positions as a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, as International Trade Commission agency team lead for the Obama-Biden Transition Project, and as a consultant to the Federal Communications Commission. Professor Shane inaugurated the Visiting Foreign Chair for the University of Ghent Program in Foreign and Comparative Law in 2001, and has been a visiting faculty member at the Harvard, Duke, Boston College, and Villanova law schools.