Neil Richards

Neil Richards is the Koch Distinguished Professor in Law at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, where he co-directs the Cordell Institute for Policy in Medicine & Law. He earned a B.A. with special honors from George Washington University in 1994 and both a J.D. and an M.A. in Legal History from the University of Virginia in 1997. After law school, Richards served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist of the United States Supreme Court and to Judge Paul V. Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He teaches courses on privacy, technology, free speech, and constitutional law, and he regularly speaks about privacy, big data, technology, and civil liberties worldwide.

Richards specializes in privacy law, information law, freedom of expression, First Amendment law, constitutional law, and data protection law, with a focus on the regulation of technologies powered by human information. He is the author of Why Privacy Matters (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Intellectual Privacy: Rethinking Civil Liberties in the Digital Age (Oxford University Press, 2015). His scholarly articles include "Privacy’s Trust Gap" (with Woodrow Hartzog) in the Yale Law Journal (2017), "The Dangers of Surveillance" in the Harvard Law Review (2013), "The Perils of Social Reading" in the Georgetown Law Journal (2013), "Privacy’s Other Path: Recovering the Law of Confidentiality" (with Daniel J. Solove) in the Georgetown Law Journal (2007), "Intellectual Privacy" in the Texas Law Review (2008), and "Rethinking Free Speech and Civil Liability" (with Daniel J. Solove) in the Columbia Law Review (2009). Richards has been awarded the Washington University School of Law’s Professor of the Year and the David M. Becker Professor of the Year in 2003. He holds appointments as an affiliate scholar with the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and the Yale Information Society Project, a Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a member of the American Law Institute, adviser to the American Law Institute Principles of Data Privacy Project, board member of the Future of Privacy Forum, and Treasurer of the Privacy Law Scholars Foundation. As a consultant and expert in privacy cases and a frequent media commentator, Richards exerts significant influence in privacy law and related fields.

Professional Email: nrichards@wustl.edu