Law School faculty member Jack M. Balkin has been named as the first incumbent of the Knight Professorship in Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, by vote of the Yale Corporation.
The new chair was established by a gift from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which is known for innovative grant making in the areas of community initiatives, journalism, education, and arts and culture. The Knight Foundation has for over a decade supported the Law School's midcareer journalism program in which distinguished professionals spend a year in residence gaining a unique insight into law and the legal system. The Law School was chosen as a recipient of the chair because of its demonstrated preeminence in constitutional law, civil liberties and first amendment scholarship.
Balkin, who has held the Lafayette S. Foster Professorship of Law since coming to Yale in 1994, is an expert in constitutional law, First Amendment law, telecommunications and cyberspace, as well as cultural evolution and social theory. His new appointment will allow him to focus more fully on teaching and scholarship about both the traditional law of speech and the press, and the new challenges to law, society, and culture presented by emerging technologies. His teaching schedule for the spring 1998 term reflects these scholarly interests: He will lead a course on the "First Amendment, as well as a related course titled "Free Speech, Telecommunications, and Cyberspace."
Balkin is also director of the Law School's Information Society Project, an intellectual center for the study of an age in which telecommunications and intellectual property are central determinants of the structure of society and the development of human culture. The project has three basic theoretical goals: promoting democratic values; creating a new social theory for the information age; and studying the role of law and legal regulation in a technology-driven world. The project sponsors student and faculty research, speakers and conferences, and it provides advice and policy activism to business leaders, legal officials, and public policy makers, both domestically and abroad.
Before coming to Yale, Balkin was the Charles Tilford McCormick Professor at the University of Texas Law School. He has also been a visiting faculty member at the University of London and Tel Aviv University. He received his A.B. and J.D. degrees from Harvard, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Cambridge. He is the author of many articles on various aspects of constitutional law, legal theory, society, and culture. This spring his theory of cultural evolution and ideology will be published by Yale Press under the title "Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology."