School Notes: Yale Law School
September/October 2019

Grant funds research on digital public sphere

Jack Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment and director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, will receive $2 million from the Knight Foundation to launch a new ISP initiative. Balkin’s Project on Governing the Digital Public Sphere will produce legal and policy recommendations to improve the functioning of the digital public sphere. Looking at external and internal governance, the initiative will study topics from antitrust and privacy to content moderation and digital propaganda.

Gift will support social justice and human rights

Yale Law School has received a gift from the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation to support the efforts of students and faculty who are working to advance social justice and human rights. As a result of the gift, the Law School’s Rule of Law Clinic will be named for business leader and philanthropist Peter Gruber. An additional fund will also be established to support a broad array of faculty and student clinical work on behalf of those in need.

The Peter Gruber Rule of Law Clinic encourages a collaborative approach to addressing issues of national security, antidiscrimination, climate change, and democracy. These clinical experiences not only change people’s lives, but also provide skills for the students as they pursue their legal careers.

Yale University has been the beneficiary of multiple gifts over the years from the Gruber Foundation, including an earlier gift to the Law School for the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women’s Rights. This program, established in 2011, regularly awards fellowships to recent alumni who want to spend a year working in either of those fields. It also sponsors multiple annual events, such as the Global Constitutionalism Seminar and the Gruber Distinguished Lectures in Global Justice and Women’s Rights.