Article: The Mathematics of Regulatory Fragmentation

By on February 18, 2026 in Center for Media Law and Policy, Internet

This study explores the rapidly evolving landscape of state-level digital platform regulation in the United States and uncovers a surprising mathematical dimension to how overlapping laws impact technology design, compliance costs, and market dynamics.

MATHEMATICS OF REGULATORY FRAGMENTATION

🔍 What the Research Explores

State governments have introduced a patchwork of social media safety laws that impose technical mandates on online platforms — especially aimed at enhancing user protections such as youth safety. While well-intentioned, these regulations do not simply add compliance costs as jurisdictions pile on more rules. Instead:

  • Each new state requirement interacts with every other, creating multiplicative — not additive — technical burdens for platforms.

  • This exponential growth in complexity stems from a combinatorial reality: as more distinct regulations are introduced, the number of potential conflicts and design constraints multiplies rapidly.

  • Smaller platforms and new market entrants are particularly disadvantaged, as they face disproportionately high engineering and operational costs to satisfy conflicting rules across jurisdictions.

  • Ironically, regulatory fragmentation may also undermine the very safeguards these laws are meant to provide, by incentivizing workarounds and fragmenting the user experience.

đź“Ś Why It Matters

This research highlights a critical, often overlooked dimension of digital policy: the interactions between laws matter just as much as the content of the laws themselves. By applying mathematical reasoning to regulation, this work provides policymakers, researchers, and technologists with a new lens for assessing the real-world effects of decentralized digital governance.

The paper contributes to debates on platform regulation, digital governance, and the economics of compliance: topics that are central to recent legislative efforts across the U.S. and around the world.

đź“Ą Read the Paper

The full paper (58 pages) is available on SSRN.

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Sealed Justice: Federal Courts’ Inconsistent Record-Sealing Rules and Their Impact on Judicial Transparency

By on January 12, 2026 in First Amendment, Transparency

My article titled “Sealed Justice: Federal Courts’ Inconsistent Record-Sealing Rules and Their Impact on Judicial Transparency” recently came out in the Journal of Free Speech Law. In the article I argue that federal district courts are doing a poor job of  protecting the public’s right of access to court records. Despite the longstanding presumption that court records are open for public inspection, parties frequently attempt to “seal” documents in order to hide them from public view. Empirical research reveals that the sealing of court records is extensive and increasing. This project is the first to comprehensively examine whether federal district courts provide clear and consistent local rules for sealing court records in civil and criminal cases. It also evaluates whether these local rules align with established Supreme Court and circuit court precedent concerning the public’s right of access to judicial records.

Here is the full abstract:

Public access to court records is a cornerstone of democratic governance, enabling public oversight of the judiciary and fostering confidence in the rule of law. Despite a strong presumption in favor of openness under both the First Amendment and common law, the sealing of federal court records has become widespread, often with minimal judicial scrutiny. Recent investigations have revealed that excessive court secrecy shields government and corporate misconduct, conceals vital public-safety information, and erodes public confidence in the courts.

This Article presents the first comprehensive analysis of the local rules governing sealing in all 94 federal districts, reviewing more than 700 provisions in both civil and criminal rules. The findings are concerning: Nearly half of all districts lack general sealing rules, many fail to reference the controlling legal standard, and basic procedural safeguards—such as public notice, consideration of alternatives to sealing, and case-specific identification of harms—are frequently absent. These deficiencies have created a patchwork of inconsistent, often toothless rules that enable secrecy to spread largely unchecked.

Without changes to federal rules, court-ordered secrecy will continue to erode public trust and obscure the work of the federal courts. This Article proposes three core principles to guide this reform. First, substantive clarity: Every rule governing sealing should expressly affirm the presumption of public access and incorporate, at a minimum, the common law’s requirements for sealing. Second, procedural rigor: Rules should require public notice of sealing requests, an opportunity for objections, identification of specific harms, consideration of less-restrictive alternatives, and mechanisms for periodic review and unsealing. Third, administrative efficiency: Rules should require parties to limit the frequency and narrow the scope of their sealing re-quests, explore redaction as an alternative, and certify their efforts to minimize the need for sealing.

You can download the article from SSRN or from the Journal of Free Speech Law.

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[Article] Nerd Harder: A Typology of Techno-Legal Solutionist Logics in Child Online Safety Laws

By on November 18, 2025 in Center for Media Law and Policy, Internet, Privacy

Co-authored with Lorcan Neill and Evan Ringel, our project examines recently enacted state-level child online safety laws (COSLs) and demonstrates how different techno-legal solutionist logics manifest in these legislative efforts.

Our analysis demonstrates three interdependent patterns: (1) the checklist fallacy (reducing safety to discrete technical features), (2) the false promise of age verification (assuming identity verification will prevent harm), and (3) the design determinism myth (overestimating design’s power to shape social outcomes).

The appeal of techno-legal solutionism transcends borders–from California to Brussels, it offers policymakers seemingly clear solutions to complex problems. However, our analysis shows that this approach fundamentally misunderstands both the social shaping of technology and the complexity of youth well-being. Technologies can influence outcomes by offering (or not) certain design features (i.e., affordances); yet these designs do not determine the outcomes. This overconfidence that technology can determine an outcome risks ignoring the more complex and nuanced forces shaping children’s online experiences. Moving forward requires abandoning the fallacy that we can simply “nerd harder” our way to youth safety—and instead embracing the more challenging work of developing comprehensive, nuanced approaches that recognize both the limitations and possibilities of technical intervention.

The Article is open access here.

Nerd Harder Website Graphic

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2025 First Amendment Day

By on October 2, 2025 in Center for Media Law and Policy, First Amendment

The UNC Center for Media Law and Policy will celebrate its sixteenth annual First Amendment Day on Wednesday, October 8, 2025.  This campus-wide, daylong series of events is designed to both celebrate the First Amendment and explore its role in the lives of Carolina students. As always, First Amendment Day is observed during National Banned Books Week.

Join us for CLE credits (Campus Life Experience), food, and thought-provoking discussions.

Here are some highlights:

Bring your students and your questions. You won’t find a smarter group of folks talking about these critical issues!

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New Article on Popular Sovereignty and a Right to Know About the Government

By on September 12, 2025 in First Amendment, Transparency

My recent article on Popular Sovereignty and a Right to Know About the Government just came out in the Arizona Law Review. In the article I argue that a right to know is not only implied by the First Amendment but is fundamental to the Constitution’s system of checks and balances and is rooted in the principle of popular sovereignty. The Framers’ commitment to self-government requires that citizens have access to information about their government if they are to exercise their sovereign authority over the government. Recognizing a right to know as a constitutional imperative, rooted in the people’s sovereign authority, establishes a durable foundation for limited government.  Here is the full abstract:

Imagine that a future U.S. President, upset about negative press coverage and plummeting approval ratings, issues an executive order instructing all federal agencies to henceforth provide no public access to executive branch records and meetings. Imagine further that the President’s party controls both chambers of Congress, which rescinds all statutory disclosure obligations imposed on the executive branch, including the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Government in the Sunshine Act, and Presidential Records Act. Is the public’s ability to understand the actions of government solely a matter for their elected representatives to decide? Disturbingly, many courts and scholars seem to think so.

If the government attempts to keep its citizens in the dark, or even actively misleads them, how can this not strike at the very heart of the Constitution? I argue in this Article that a right to know about the government is fundamental to the Constitution’s system of checks and balances. While past scholarship has largely grounded the right to know in the First Amendment, this Article advances a more foundational claim: the Framers’ unwavering commitment to popular sovereignty demands that the people have a right to know about their government. Recognizing a right to know as a constitutional imperative, rooted in the people’s sovereign authority, establishes a durable foundation for limited government—one that ensures that citizens can hold their leaders accountable and fully exercise their role in self-government.

Implementing a right to know about the government will present many challenges. Fortunately, we can draw guidance from the Supreme Court’s cases applying a public right of access to the courts, and we have decades of experience with open government statutes such as FOIA and the Sunshine Act. Building on this foundation, I lay out three core principles that should guide the development of a right to know about the government. First, a right to know should be limited in scope and extend only so far as is necessary to fulfill the needs of democratic self-government. Second, even when a right to know applies, it should yield when countervailing interests are sufficiently weighty. Third, the government must have leeway in designing access policies and procedures that account for the practical realities of providing public access.

You can download the article from SSRN.

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