Gautam Hans

Gautam Hans is an Associate Clinical Professor of Law and Associate Director of the First Amendment Clinic. An expert on First Amendment law and technology policy, Professor Hans analyzes, through research and advocacy, the legal and policy issues implicating technology and civil liberties. Professor Hans also researches and works on issues relating to clinical legal education, with a particular focus on social justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

A frequent media commenter on privacy, free speech, and surveillance, Professor Hans regularly speaks at conferences and symposia on topics relating to civil liberties, clinical legal education, and technology law and policy. A leader in the national clinical community, he currently serves as a board member of the Clinical Legal Education Association and the Center for Study of Applied Legal Education and on the advisory board of the Initiative for a Representative First Amendment. Prior to his academic career, Professor Hans worked at the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, CA, for four years, focusing on privacy, free speech, and surveillance law and policy.

Before joining Cornell Law, Professor Hans served as Associate Clinical Professor of Law and founding director of Vanderbilt Law School’s Stanton Foundation First Amendment Clinic. He completed his clinical teaching fellowship at the University of Michigan Law School.

Professor Hans earned his J.D., cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School; his M.S. in information policy from the University of Michigan School of Information; and his B.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. While in graduate school, he was Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review and served as a student-attorney in the Entrepreneurship Clinic and the Civil-Criminal Litigation Clinic. Before entering graduate school, Professor Hans was an editorial assistant in the Knopf Group of Random House.