A new framework for understanding technology law

University of Richmond School of Law professor Rebecca Crootof and University of Wisconsin Law School professor BJ Ard have published Technology Law, the first open access coursebook designed to help define and teach the emerging field of technology law.

The freely available text examines the legal questions raised by all technologies and offers a practical framework for analyzing them.

What is Technology Law?

Professor Crootof: Technology law isn't simply the law governing artificial intelligence, social media, or cybersecurity. It's a way of thinking about the relationship between technology, law, and society, which includes both how law shapes what technologies develop and proliferate and how legal systems respond when new technologies challenge existing laws and institutions.

Technologies as different as drones, cryptocurrencies, autonomous vehicles, and generative AI often raise similar legal questions: Should existing laws apply? Can we use analogy to stretch old law to apply to a new device or activity? Or do we need new laws? And which institutions are best equipped to answer these questions? Technology Law provides a framework for identifying those recurring questions and approaching them systematically, rather than treating every new technology as an entirely new legal problem.

Why did you decide to write Technology Law?

BJ Ard and I have both taught technology law for years, but we found there wasn't a coursebook that approached the subject as its own field. Most resources focus on individual technologies or traditional legal subjects like privacy, intellectual property, or communications law. But just like health law, environmental law, and other legal fields, technology law has its own canon of foundational texts, methods for identifying concerns, and specialized toolbox of legal actions.

What makes this coursebook different?

This is the first coursebook dedicated specifically to technology law. And to make it more accessible, we made it open access: anyone can read it for free, which lowers barriers for law schools, instructors, students, and practitioners interested in the subject.

The book combines foundational concepts, real-world examples, fun hypotheticals, discussion questions, and practical exercises that encourage readers to think critically about regulating technology. Rather than memorizing rules for individual technologies, readers learn an analytical framework they can apply throughout their careers. To showcase how the methodology works for all technologies, we apply it both to older technologies (like railroads, automobiles, and smartphones) and entirely imaginary ones (like teleporters and replicators).

Why is technology law becoming increasingly important?

Every major technological development raises questions in all legal subjects—torts, criminal law, contracts, and so on. Take a generative AI chatbot. If it provides faulty medical advice, is that a tort and can we hold the company liable? If it provides advice that facilitates a mass shooting, is the company an accessory to a crime?

Lawyers, judges, policymakers, business leaders, scholars, and other legal actors need a way to think through those questions thoughtfully and consistently. Our methodology helps get a handle on the types of issues that law can address and the toolbox of potential legal actions that one can take, with a focus on their techlaw manifestations.

Who do you hope will use the book?

Our primary audience is law students and instructors, but we also hope it will be useful for practicing attorneys, policymakers, researchers, business educators, and anyone else interested in the relationship between technology and law.

Because it's freely available online, anyone can access and adapt it for teaching and learning without the cost barriers associated with traditional legal casebooks. We also have offered our teaching materials to fellow instructors, and folks from around the world have taken us up on that offer.

Law isn’t doomed to trail after technology, constantly playing catch up. Techlaw showcases how we can use law to shape what gets invented, how innovations are designed, what technologies proliferate, and when and how they’re used—in other words, techlaw helps us understand how we can foster the development of the society we want to live in.