This story was published in the Stanford Report on Dec. 19, 2014.

Stanford scholars are engaged in ongoing basic and applied research — much of it interdisciplinary — that creates new knowledge and benefits society. This Stanford University report lists major research projects across the campus. Following are examples from 2014 for Stanford Law School:

In The Atlantic, law Professor Barbara van Schewick explains why we need network neutrality rules and what kind of rules the FCC should adopt to ensure that Internet users can access the applications and content of their choice online.

In “The New Minimal Cities,” published in the Yale Law Journal, law Professor Michelle Wilde Anderson examines the municipal insolvencies of the Great Recession and cities’ obligations for minimum services to their residents, addressing such questions as what share of public revenues must be reserved for residents in order to keep high-poverty areas safe and habitable, even in the face of unpaid obligations to creditors.

In a California Law Review article, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, assistant professor of law, argues that search results from Google and other search engines can provide better evidence of distinctiveness as it applies to trademark law by showing how strongly consumers associate a word or phrase with particular products.

In The Evolving Sphere of Food Security, Barton H. “Buzz” Thompson, Jr., the Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law and the Perry L. McCarty Director at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, examines the development of irrigation and water institutions worldwide, revealing their importance to agriculture, especially to developing nations around the world seeking to alleviate food insecurity, and how water institutions evolve over time in response to major challenges.