Stanford’s new RegLab, short for Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab, deploys an interdisciplinary team of legal experts, data scientists, social scientists, and engineers who partner with government agencies to design and evaluate programs, policies, and technologies that modernize governance. RegLab’s director is Professor Daniel E. Ho, the William Benjamin Scott and Luna M. Scott Professor of Law; Professor of Political Science; Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research; and Associate Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). RegLab’s ongoing work building the evidence base and technology for effective administrative governance includes projects such as detecting industrial agriculture with computer vision, justice in mass adjudication, using microdata to fight COVID-19 in Detroit, and modernizing tax compliance.

The agriculture-focused project, for example, originated from the fact that, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, agriculture is the leading source of water pollution, yet industrial-scale livestock farms often evade permitting. In research published in Nature Sustainability, RegLab used high-resolution satellite imagery to identify these farms in North Carolina, and detected 95 percent of existing farms at 10 percent of the current cost of identification. RegLab is now building a comprehensive national map to help meet the goal of cutting farm noncompliance in half. The map can be updated in real time to provide regulators and environmental groups with a realistic way to take action against unpermitted and polluting facilities.

The recently-established Stanford Center for Law and History (SCLH) is built on the principles of interdisciplinary collaboration and academic rigor. The center brings together faculty, postdocs, and students from across the globe to participate in a broad range of conferences, workshops, and lectures devoted to examining the multifaceted interrelationships between law and history. Professor Amalia D. Kessler, MA ’96, PhD ’01, the Lewis Talbot and Nadine Hearn Shelton Professor of International Legal Studies, and Associate Dean for Advanced Degree Programs, is the Director of SCLH. In addition to a Yale Law School JD, Professor Kessler holds an MA in history and a PhD in European history from Stanford.

One example of the cutting-edge scholarship emerging from the center includes the May 2019 conference in anticipation of the 19th Amendment’s centennial. The conference, Legal Histories and Legacies of the 19th Amendment, honored women trailblazers in the law, and offered sessions on suffrage movements, immigration and family citizenship, and a keynote conversation, “Women & Law, Past & Present.” The gathering brought together scholars from academic institutions across the country, including notable women judges who led the discussion: Judge Michelle Friedland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Justice Tanya R. Kennedy of the New York Supreme Court Civil Branch, and immediate past president of the National Association of Women Judges, and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.

The Stanford Center for Racial Justice (SCRJ) was established in 2020 by co-founders Professor Ralph Richard Banks, Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law, and Diane T. Chin, Acting Director of SCRJ. The center, located at Stanford Law School, seeks to educate the entire Stanford community to become partners in the quest to eradicate racism, and to further democracy, liberty, and justice. Through three channels, Research & Policy, Training & Development, and Strategic Communications, the SCRJ will effect systemic change at Stanford and in the nation broadly.

The SCRJ will create a ripple effect with its work in training and development. While law students will be research partners in creating policy recommendations, graduate and undergraduate students at Stanford will be participants in the center’s workshops and training, ensuring that Stanford graduates are in the vanguard of advancing a new racial norm in every job they hold. The center’s racial justice curriculum will equip students with the experience, perspective, and skill set they will need as they join the workforce and attain leadership positions nationwide. In this way, the SCRJ’s work, teaching, and research will serve to challenge racism across the country.