Peter M. Shane
Distinguished Service Professor (Adjunct) of Law and Public Policy
Founding Director and Chair, Board of Advisors, Institute for the Study of Information
J.D., Yale Law School
email: pshane@andrew.cmu.edu
Professional Background
Professor Shane, a full-time Heinz faculty member from 2000 to 2003, is currently the Joseph S. Platt - Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. A graduate of Harvard College (A.B. 1974) and Yale Law School (J.D. 1977), Professor Shane served in both the U.S. Department of Justice and the Office of Management and Budget before starting his teaching career at the University of Iowa in 1981. He was dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law from 1994 to 1998. He is a member of the American Law Institute, and chairs the faculty editors for I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society.
Honors
Professor Shane was named the Inaugural Visiting “Foreign Chair,” for the University of Ghent Program in Foreign and Comparative Law, in Ghent, Belgium, in December, 2001. During Fall 1999, he was the Harold Gill Reuschlein Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law. In 1998, he received a Citation of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania House of Representatives for “outstanding contributions as dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law,” and was highlighted in January 1998 as one of 40 “Young Leaders of the Academy” in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, published by the American Association for Higher Education.
Research
Professor Shane is internationally recognized for his research in administrative and constitutional law, with a special focus on the powers of the Presidency and separation of powers law. He has also been cited as “a major figure in the e-democracy movement,” primarily because of his writings on information technology and democratic theory, and his ongoing research in the design of online consultation environments for public policy making by administrative agencies. From 2002-2006 he was principal investigator for the National Science Foundation-funded “Virtual Agora Project,” which created and tested software to enable real-time deliberation among non-expert citizens on complex public policy issues.
Teaching
Professor Shane’s teaching for the Heinz School has focused on e-democracy, the Internet and democratic theory, and telecommunications law.
Community Service
From 1996 to 2004 Professor Shane was a member of the national Board of Directors and chair of the Program Committee for the Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO), which presented him its award for distinguished service in November 2004.
Selected Publications
Peter M. Shane, ed., Democracy Online: The Prospects for Political Renewal through the Internet (Routledge, 2004).
Peter M. Shane, John Podesta and Richard C. Leone, eds., A Little Knowledge: Privacy, Security and Public Information After September 11 (Century Foundation Press, 2004).
Peter M. Shane & Harold H. Bruff, Separation of Powers Law: Cases and Materials (Carolina Academic Press, 2d ed., 2005).
Jerry L. Mashaw, Richard A. Merrill, & Peter M. Shane, Administrative Law: The American Public Law System (West Group, 5th ed. 2003).
Peter M. Shane, “Analyzing Constitutions,” in R.A.W. Rhodes, Sarah Binder & Bert Rockman, eds., Oxford Handbooks of Political Science: Political Institutions (2006).
Peter M. Shane, “Democratic Legitimacy and Digital Government,” in Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko and Matti Mällkiä, eds., Encyclopedia of Digital Government (2006).
Peter M. Shane, Social Theory Meets Social Policy: Culture, Identity and Public Information Policy After September 11, 2 ISJLP i-xxiii (2006).
Peter M. Shane, Deliberative America, 1 J. Public Deliberation, Article 10 (2005) (reviewing Bruce Ackerman and James S. Fishkin, Deliberation Day (2004) and Ethan J. Leib, Deliberative Democracy in America: A Proposal for a Popular Branch of Government (2004)).
Peter M. Shane, Turning GOLD into EPG: Lessons from Low-Tech Democratic Experimentalism for Electronic Rulemaking and Other Ventures in Cyberdemocracy, 1 ISJLP 147-170 (2005).
Peter M. Shane, When Interbranch Norms Break Down: Of Arms-for-Hostages, "Orderly Shutowns," Presidential Impeachments, and Judicial Coups, 12 Cornell J. L. & Pub. Pol. 503-542 (2003).